Out of Africa
by Ark ThirtySix
Summary: Maura returns from a trip overseas with a traumatic secret that she's terrified of revealing even to Jane, but how can she lie to the one person she knows can save her?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: The usual, don't own the characters, don't make money off them. This piece does touch on the issue of sexual violence, but it isn't _about_ that and doesn't stay in that place. Ultimately, it's centered on the power of friendship, family and love. UPDATE: Out of respect for not dropping spoilers, I haven't been very specific here - if you have any concerns at all about what is meant by "touch on the issue of sexual violence", please PM me and I'd be happy to explain, without spoiling.

I'm sorry to say that the names and details of the Rwandan genocide and the war criminals still being sought for justice are correct and true, at least in so far as my research goes. I apologize for any inaccuracies.

There is an innate human desire to find that one person who will always have your back without question and would be utterly willing to kill for you if it comes to that. We all need to know we have that place of safety and connection. This is Maura's journey to understanding that Jane is that person and that place.

Rizzles is in the eye of the beholder…but if you try to play the drinking game with this story, you'll have alcohol poisoning by the end of Chapter 3 and I really don't want that on my conscience. :-)

Chapter 1

Jane Rizzoli spun the steering wheel and slid the Subaru at an angle into the only space left on the narrow street. Even with a generous driveway, she couldn't hope to squeeze in behind the four cars already jammed in ahead of her. Her mother's car she expected, but somehow both brothers had beat her here, as well as Sgt. Korsak. She had put one tire partially up on the curb, giving the car a half-drunk look which perfectly matched her mood.

"What, not a one of you can carpool?" she groused. She climbed across the passenger side, shoving the door open with one boot and scooping out the grocery bag of drinks that was her promised contribution. Making her way to the door, she carefully angled to press the bell with one elbow and stood back at the sound of footsteps approaching at a rush.

"Janie, what the hell?" Frankie Rizzoli threw back the door, letting out a wave of cold air. "Didja stop to brew your own? Get in here, Ma's goin' nuts."

Jane raised the bag of two liters and six packs, pinning her brother to the foyer wall. Reflexively, he raised his arms to take the bag as the air rushed out of his lungs.

"Well, she can call Cavanaugh and he can explain to her that murderers today in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts don't care when she's scheduled dinner, and they certainly don't care when I'm supposed to go pick up Maura from the airport. Was she able to get a cab?" Jane peered into the living room but didn't see any sign of her best friend, who was, at least on paper, still the homeowner despite the steadily rising number of Rizzolis who had taken up residence.

"Yeah, Ma's got her cornered in the kitchen."

Jane breathed a sigh of relief. "Did you pay for the cab? She wasn't supposed to have to do that. We were going to take care of everything."

"I dunno, I was out back, but I think she has the dough for it. Easy," Frankie coughed as Jane caught him around the waist. "I'm not one of your suspects."

"Really? Cause you look kinda shifty." But before she could make good on the threat to tickle his ribs, she was half-tackled from behind, the force carrying her out into the living room. The couch caught her behind the legs and she flipped over onto the cushions, pinned beneath her older brother, Tommy.

"Get…_off_…" she gritted. Squirming, she managed to avoid Tommy's patented headlock and planted one foot in her brother's chest to hold him out of range at the other end of the couch. Just as she braced her back against the arm of the couch for leverage, Jane felt a strong, familiar hand twine itself in the collar of her shirt and pull her upright.

"What did I tell you kids about playing on the furniture?"

Jane and Tommy continued to glower at each other until their mother shook them again, jostling their heads until they nearly collided.

"This is why we could never have nice things," she complained. "Your father's La-Z-Boy didn't even last a month, and this is the thanks you give Dr. Isles?"

"Sorry, Ma." Tommy turned his 1000 watt smile up at his mother and she melted. _As usual_, Jane thought with disgust.

"Yeah, sorry, Ma," she echoed.

Satisfied, Angela released her grip and patted her daughter on the head before returning to the kitchen. "It's not me you need to apologize to," she called back over her shoulder.

Jane heard Tommy mutter something that sounded a lot like "apologize for being born" and she kicked him squarely in the shin. Tommy yelped and twisted her foot until they both tumbled off onto the floor between the couch and coffee table. As Jane clambered onto her knees, she froze as she found herself staring down at a pair of taupe brown leather sandals that, by process of elimination, must belong to Dr. Maura Isles. What she couldn't understand was why anything belonging to Maura would be covered in mud.

"Your shoes are dirty," she blurted, then cringed at how stupid it sounded. Quickly she clambered up, a grin splitting her face as she hugged her friend. For a moment she forgot about the difference in their height, lifting the shorter woman off her feet. "Whoa, sorry," Jane laughed. "Either you lost weight or Ma's been putting steroids in the spaghetti."

A look of consternation flitted across Maura's face and she opened her mouth as if to provide an analysis of the statistical likelihood of Angela Rizzoli's role in an anabolic steroid doping operation but caught herself. "Oh, that was a joke."

"Yes. But not this." Jane hugged her again, more carefully this time. "I'm so glad you're back. You have no idea what these idiots are like when you're not here. And next time you get the urge to go volunteer your time to help the poor, try Southie, OK? At least not some place like Burwandi where you can't even get Internet."

"Burundi," Maura corrected her. "Rwanda is next door."

"Yeah, well, too far away for me." Jane pulled back to take a better look and realized that the mud was not confined to Maura's shoes. "Oh geez, did they give you time to change?"

Maura broke into a smile, unexpectedly shy, as she glanced down at herself. Her long-sleeved blue shirt was cuffed to her forearms and unacceptably wrinkled by the medical examiner's exacting standards.

"I look terrible, I know." Nervously, she smoothed the shirt down over the front of her khaki field pants. When first purchased—one of dozens of UPS boxes that had steadily arrived on the doorstep in anticipation of her medical trip to the northern provinces of the tiny African nation—they had made her look like a modern day Dr. Livingstone, Jane had said. Now, after two weeks volunteering with a medical relief mission in a remote African village, she looked more like the Little Matchstick Girl on a bad day. "I was going to get cleaned up, but I had to switch flights, everything was delayed, and then everyone was here already."

"No, you look fantastic," Jane lied. "Especially for someone who just flew 30 hours and had a layover in Detroit. I mean, Detroit—really?" She quickly checked over Maura's shoulder and found that her mother had the kitchen well in hand. "They wouldn't notice if you snuck off and grabbed a quick nap."

"I'm a little jet-lagged," Maura confessed, "but I need to stay awake as long as possible to help my circadian rhythms align."

"Well, no one ever accused the Rizzolis having rhythm, but we can certainly keep you up. You'll be lucky to get to bed before midnight if Ma has her way. She was so proud of you going to volunteer, but she really missed you. We all did."

Maura's eyes, half-glazed, still managed to smile. "She's been very kind." She had kept her arm looped through Jane's and seemed to sway slightly for balance but caught herself quickly. "Sorry," she apologized with an embarrassed laugh. "I guess my inner ear hasn't caught up yet either."

"I'm sorry I couldn't pick you up at the airport like we planned. I was walking out of the station and we got a call," Jane explained. "I tried your phone but I guess you didn't have it back on yet?"

Maura's eyes slid in and out of focus and she made a vague patting motion at her hip pocket. "I actually…I lost it somewhere between Bujumbura and Dar Es Salaam."

"Gesundheit. Well, if you get a bunch of calls on your bill from some giraffe trying to phone home, I guess you know what happened." Jane tried to flag down Korsak as he moved out of the kitchen to begin setting places at the long dining table. "Have you heard from Frost?"

"Right before you got here." Korsak didn't look up, delicately setting out the silverware—forks to the left, knives to the right with the blade turned in. "He's going to be at the scene a while, but he said to go ahead without him. And you owe him lunch at Morella's for taking the call for you."

Two lunches, at least, Jane thought. It had been two very long weeks since Maura had flown out of Logan International to take part in a medical mission, a chance to work with the living for once. Even though she had encouraged her friend to take the opportunity, the time had gone by far more slowly than she had anticipated. To begin with, the replacement Maura had selected had to cancel at the last minute and they had been subjected to Dr. Pike for the entire two weeks. Even two minutes was too much of the man in Jane's opinion, and enduring his ineptitude made each day feel like a year.

Other than that, work was fine, she had told herself. It was calm, a little boring, and just routine—nothing like what happened when she went down the stairs to the medical examiner's office to complain about a case, or her mother, or the latest disaster in what was left of her love life.

She felt Maura's hand come to rest on her shoulder, a gentle bid for attention. "You know, if you think it's OK, could you keep everyone occupied? The more I think about a shower, the more it seems like a good idea."

Jane looked down at Maura and tried to see past how happy she was just to have her friend back home. Frankly, Maura didn't look that great—at least not by Maura standards—and she seemed almost…nervous? No, she needed to stop bringing work home in her head, Jane chastised herself. This was perfectly normal for anyone with this much jet lag, not that anyone had ever accused Maura of being normal.

"Yes, ma'am." Jane snapped a salute with one arm as she deftly guided Maura around the obstacle course her family had created of the furniture. "You know what they called me in flag football? The Punisher. A little interference, coming up."

Maura flashed her a grateful look as she slipped into the master bedroom. Jane waited a moment before discreetly testing the handle to make sure that Maura hadn't completely lost her senses and left a door unlocked with the Rizzoli brothers in the house.

Maura slipped out of the mud-stained pants and tried to take off her shirt but her hands were trembling too much to work the buttons at first. She didn't think Jane had noticed and that was the first hurdle. She had held it together this far and if she could just make it through dinner, then everything would be fine.

_Fine? What did that even mean anymore?_

Maura managed to loosen the top few buttons, just far enough to slip the shirt over her head and the long-sleeved undershirt as well. She wondered if she should even try washing them or just toss them in the trash. Even if the stains came out, she would be reminded each time she looked at them.

Slipping into the shower, she stood under the hot water until her skin scalded pink, letting the shower glass steam over completely. Maura kept both hands braced against the tile wall, allowing her own weight to create a bridge to hold her steady under the spray. As the temperature rose, her pulse rose with it, pounding irregularly in her ears. She was so tired, so incredibly exhausted, but she couldn't trust herself to close her eyes.

She knew she had to get out eventually. Everyone was waiting, all her friends—her family of choice—who were so happy to have her home, and she couldn't disappoint them, especially Jane. She could only dimly remember when they had planned the dinner, nearly a month ago before she had left, a chance to work away from the morgue, to see the world.

She had seen far more than she had ever bargained on.

Maura kept her eyes closed against the water as it streamed over her face, unable to tell the hot spray from the tears. She let it rain down on her and carry away the filth, exhaustion, and every trace of Africa. _And the blood… _

She didn't open her eyes until she was certain the water had stopped running red.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Dinner was warm, chaotic, and all-encompassing. Maura had somehow forgotten in her exhaustion just how overwhelming Jane's family could be, particularly when all gathered in one place, but the steady stream of noisy banter was exactly what she needed to keep herself out of her own head.

And while Angela's cooking had always been good, after weeks of substandard camp rations, the dinner ranked among the best meals Maura had ever eaten, from fresh garlic bread to lasagna overflowing with ricotta, pork sausage and homemade marinara, to a tiramisu so decadent that a single bite sent her blood sugar spiking.

Maura steadily sipped at her wine, careful not to drink too quickly as Frankie had appointed himself the maitre'd and no one's glass was allowed to come within an inch of running empty. If she drank as much as the darkness hovering at the edges of her mind was demanding, then she might be under her chair before they were done with seconds.

Angela, keeping an eagle eye on the proceedings (or meddling, as Jane put it), had decided that Maura needed thirds to help put a little weight back on her.

"It's too much," Maura had protested, but couldn't help laughing at the determined look in the older woman's eye. "All right, all right—just half that, please."

Jane had leaned in, cutting a smaller portion and serving it herself. "Don't worry," she murmured, "we can give the rest to Korsak's latest charity case."

"What is it this time?" she whispered back.

Jane jerked her chin back towards the kitchen. As casually as she could manage, Maura leaned back and saw a rectangular plastic pet carrier sitting in the corner by the refrigerator. One orange paw was thrust through the cage grate, clawing at the latch.

"Doesn't look like his new friend is too happy about the situation," she observed. "Do you think Sgt. Korsak is sublimating his need for romantic companionship?"

The table fell utterly silent just as she uttered the words. Korsak was staring at her with his mouth partially open, blinking in disbelief. "If I knew what sublimating meant," he said, "I think I would say…no?"

"I-I'm sorry, Sgt. Korsak, I didn't mean to imply that you weren't happy and fulfilled emotionally. I've just never met anyone so interested in finding homes for small mammals, much less a police officer. It was simply a theory."

Maura glanced down to see Jane pulling the wineglass out of her hand and replacing it with water. "I've got a theory for you—you're cut off."

When everyone burst out laughing, including Korsak, Maura allowed herself to smile as well, but her stomach remained clenched. She was too nervous, too edgy—if she wasn't careful she would slip and bring the whole house of cards down. If she could make it through dinner until she was alone with Jane, then everything would be fine. She had been telling herself that for the last three days, the one thought that had sustained her, had gotten her home again.

After dinner, Angela invoked the Rizzoli Right to Rest and planted herself on the sofa with Maura to catch up while the siblings cleaned and packed the food away, although where she would find it the next day was anyone's guess.

"I'm sorry, Angela, no pictures," Jane heard her friend explaining. "I don't think my phone is going to turn up, but maybe I can get someone to email me a few. You would have liked seeing some of the children we met."

Jane stiffened at the word _children _and tried to move into Maura's line of sight to give her the cut off signal. Her mother had been making sidelong remarks about grandkids recently which bore a closer resemblance to atomic bombs than hints.

"Tell me your favorite story about them." Angela was looking at Maura like an alcoholic at a bartender just before closing time. Despite her frantic gesturing, Maura either didn't see or was disregarding Jane entirely: either one was a possibility.

"Well, there was one that reminded me a lot of Jane actually. All the children would hang around the tent we had set up as an office, even if they'd already had vaccinations. Some of them were playing a kind of ballgame and it reminded me of softball, very disorganized and with a lot more fighting, and they convinced me to play with them."

Jane's hands slowed on the glass casserole dish she was drying as she imagined Maura surrounded by a flock of children, trying to organize them into teams and demonstrating the rigid body collision theory of the batting stance.

"There were two brothers who had a sister who had tagged along and they didn't want her to play, but she had other ideas."

"Oh, that was Janie," Angela agreed with a laugh. "Never wanted to be left out."

"I tried to convince her that you can't steal a base in softball, but either she didn't understand me or she didn't want to." Maura's narrowed eyes said that she hadn't made up her mind yet but she had her suspicions. "After that, they came back every day that we were in the village before we moved on." Her voice turned, taking on a confiding tone. "They gave me a nickname too, a real one. Dr. Amaurica."

Jane felt a small wince within her heart at the memory of Maura's unfortunate history with nicknames and at hearing the shy pride in her voice now.

"You done scrubbing that thing?" Frankie asked. Jane started, coming back to herself and handed over the dish to be put away with the rest of the collection.

Korsak emerged from the utility room where he had exiled the cat, now known as Rockford, with the pet carrier in one hand. "I think we're going to call it a night," he announced. "Just glad you're back safely, Dr. Isles. It's been a little quiet without you, and when it's quiet, Jane gets restless, and then…"

"Things happen," Maura agreed. She returned his quick hug and promised to do her best to find something suspicious in the very first autopsy. "And I had an idea—if you need to have a vet evaluate Rockford and you happen to notice that she's single…"

Korsak grinned. "I promise I'll give her my number."

* * *

When Angela finally shooed her boys home, she made an overly casual excuse to turn in to the guest house as she hugged Jane and Maura good night. As soon as the door closed, Jane muttered, "If I find Cavanaugh's car blocking mine outside…"

"You should be happy for your mother." While Maura understood the potential awkwardness in having one's mother dating the boss, she wasn't sure Jane understood just how lonely her mother had been following the divorce. "Lt. Cavanaugh has always been very concerned for your mother's feelings."

"Lt. Cavanaugh," Jane grated, "is thinking about one thing. I know this."

"How?"

Jane closed her eyes in exasperation. "He's a guy, Maura. He's a guy of a certain age and this is my _mother_ we're talking about."

"It's not possible that he finds her attractive, a good companion, and a wonderful cook?"

Jane's eyes were narrowed now at her instead. "I repeat, this is my _mother_. Stop, just stop," she said, waving her hands, "you're creeping me out. She's not supposed to have sex."

"Well, she did at least three times," Maura chuckled.

"Two words." Jane held up matching fingers. "Immaculate. Conception." She paused then, looking intently at Maura, her brow slowly furrowing as her expression shifted from frustration to concern. "You look exhausted. No one knew how your travel was going to get all messed up when we planned this. I should go." She was leaning forward to lever herself up from the couch, when Maura put one hand on her arm.

"Don't go, please?" She knew she must look terrible, but managed to smile. "It just feels good to be home again." She gestured at the remnants of the living room, which still looked ready for a photo session with _Architectural Digest_. "Look." She fumbled with the remote control and the television sprang to life. "It's the 7th inning, you don't want to miss the stretch."

"Right," Jane drawled. "Do you even know what that means?"

"Popular folklore states that in 1910 President William Taft stood up to stretch in the middle of the 7th inning at a Washington Senators game and the other spectators felt compelled to join him, but the practice was documented as early as the 1860s."

Jane grinned at her, affectionate and lazy with beer and the late hour. "Yeah, but do you know what it means?"

Maura shook her head, both hands clasped in her lap now. "No, but you could tell me." If anything could distract Jane to keep her here a little longer, it would be baseball; without waiting, she pulled a folded fleece blanket from the storage trunk hidden within the matching ottoman and settled herself back on the couch.

"Well, basically, it's an excuse to sell peanuts. And beer," Jane added, tilting back her own bottle.

"Are you comfortable?" Maura had also extracted the small tapestry covered throw pillow that had lived up to its name and been thrown under the coffee table at some point during the evening. "Most commonly reported back pain comes from a misalignment of the thoracic vertebrae, often from inappropriate posture."

Jane grudgingly inched out of her slouch. "Did your yoga instructor tell you that or your finishing school coach?"

Maura sighed as she vigorously plumped the pillow back into shape. "All they had on the airport television was Dr. Oz. It wasn't like I had much of a choice."

"Awww." Jane made a face that was somehow sad and utterly sarcastic. "No Coroner's Quarterly Roundtable? Mortician's Minute Monthly?"

Maura was only half-listening to her friend's banter as she considered the available space on the couch and made the only logical decision.

Abruptly, Jane broke off in her recitation of fake medical talk shows to stare down at her lap where Maura had now curled, her head cushioned on the pillow. "Is this your way of asking me to move to the recliner?"

"No. Your legs combined with this cushion are the perfect height to align my cervical vertebrae." Maura twisted on her side to settle in more comfortably while drawing the blanket up to her chin. Every muscle in her back was aching and it was all she could do to bite back a whimper as the tension slowly began to release. It had taken every ounce of self-restraint to keep from letting the pain show during dinner, to keep her expression as bright and happy as she knew she should be to be with the people she loved the most.

"Well, I don't want your cervix out of alignment." Jane shook her head, eyes half-closed, in a way Maura had come to realize meant Jane thought she was being ridiculous but had decided to humor her. "Seriously, you must be beat. You don't have to stay up for me—I have my own television, y'know."

"Are the Pilgrims winning?" Maura murmured.

Jane squinted at the boxed statistics at the bottom of the screen. "Yeah, hey…when did they score? Wow, that..."

"Then my mojo's working."

Maura felt a slight rippling as Jane struggled to contain her laughter. "What do you know about mojo?"

"I know Turk Wendell always pitched with four pieces of black licorice in his mouth and he would spit them out immediately at the end of the inning and brush his teeth."

"Ewww!" Jane took two pulls on the beer, visibly disgusted at the idea. "Where do you _get_ this stuff? Fine, just lie still. And if this works," she hissed, "we have a double header on Saturday."

Maura smiled and curled a little further into herself beneath the blanket. She had broken her longstanding rule against airport coffee to force herself to stay awake on the final flight, trying to realign her body clock to avoid the worst of the jet lag. Now though, now she was home. She could sleep at last; she was safe.

As the word _safe_ brushed through her mind, she tensed involuntarily, and it took several slow breaths to bring her heart rate down. It was true though. She had known if she could just make it back to Boston, to the department, the Rizzolis, then everything would be fine.

Maura kept her eyes closed but every fiber of her mind was active and alert, focused on the familiar sensory details surrounding her—the fabric of the couch cushions, the soft fleece of the blanket against the bare skin of her arms, the lingering smell of Angela's lasagna and the fresh cut flowers Tommy had brought (or possibly stolen), the roughness of Jane's linen blazer. And beneath that blazer, on the opposite hip, Maura knew the standard issue police service weapon was waiting.

She felt Jane shifting slightly on the couch, settling in as the game came back from commercial. The patter of the announcers, in English at least for all that the commentary might as well be a foreign language, was unexpectedly soothing. Again, Maura felt an involuntary shiver and bit her lip. When Jane's free arm settled across her body in the most casual yet protective gesture, instantly the shiver stilled itself and a calm warmth began to spread outward from her knotted stomach.

"Outside corner, _beautiful_." Unconsciously, Jane began patting the blanket in a kind of one-handed clap until she remembered herself. "Sorry, shhh, sorry—don't move, it's working."

The last thing that flitted through Maura's mind as she slipped away beneath the gray exhaustion was that she had come halfway across the world to crawl within this woman's protection: leaving was the very last thing she meant to do.

* * *

Jane checked her watch against the television, then looked down at her sleeping friend. She kicked herself mentally for the habit of evaluating every unconscious person to see if they were a potential corpse or not, but Maura hadn't moved in nearly an hour as the game went into extra innings. The blanket had slipped to reveal that she was sleeping with her hands curled, pulled up beneath her chin. Her lips were parted slightly and her breathing was shallow and calm, but somehow she looked more exhausted than when she had fallen asleep.

"Hey," Jane whispered. "Hey, you in there?" Maura gave a slight whimper and shifted, pulling her arms in more closely to herself. "We won with a walk-off in the 11th. Don't you want to tell me about what happened the last time there was a walk-off on a Tuesday in an odd numbered year in the Eastern Time Zone?"

When Maura didn't respond, she began analyzing her chances at extracting herself without waking her friend.

In truth, if it hadn't been for the three beers telling her it was time to find a bathroom, she might not have tried to wake Maura at all. The peace and quiet was rare for them, and she felt like some part of her that had been running on empty for too long was finally starting to recharge. There was just something very good about having her nearby, even blissfully unconscious and…drooling?

But the beers weren't going to go away on their own, and reluctantly Jane shook Maura's shoulder again. "Can you sit up?" she coaxed. Taking silence for a no, Jane slid her hands under Maura's shoulders and gently levered her upright. "C'mon, just sit up, OK? It's like meditating except…except you're not conscious."

Maura's head slowly rolled to one side as her breathing deepened and she began to come around. "Wh-what time…" A yawn overtook her entire body, nearly overbalancing her back onto the couch.

"Bedtime," Jane said firmly. "C'mon, can you stand up?"

Maura seemed uncertain about that until Jane slung one of her arms over her shoulders, raising her up off the couch and starting a slow shuffle to the bedroom. "Yes," Maura mumbled, eyes still closed. "Apparently I can. I have two legs, you know."

"Yes, you do." Jane felt the brief wave of unease that always came over her when she thought about the night they had been trapped at the reservoir and Maura's injury had nearly led to an amputation. She had tried to turn it into a joke, wondering if Maura would be able to find a friend who was missing the other leg and they could split the cost of designer shoes, but it still couldn't erase the sick feeling of how close she had come to failing to protect her friend. She had sworn she would never let Maura out of her sight again, and had even briefly considered going along with her to Africa to use up some of her banked leave time, but it would've seemed like she didn't trust Maura. Actually, it was everyone else on the planet she didn't trust.

"Lost m'suitcase. What will I unpack?"

Jane stifled a groan and kept up their slow momentum. "I think they have Jimmy Hoffa somewhere in baggage claim. Don't worry, it'll turn up, and it won't kill you to let things get wrinkled for one night."

Jane found her way into the bedroom and flipped back the duvet with one hand so she could ease Maura onto the mattress and swing her legs up onto the bed. "You really did lose weight," she said under her breath. "What the hell didn't they feed you?"

Maura lay still, half-sprawled across her 9,000 thread count sheets as Jane tucked the covers up around her. She tried to smile but felt it smile slide slightly into confusion. "I don't think that was much of a vacation for you," she murmured. "I'd say sleep tight, but I don't think you're gonna have a problem with that."

Jane was halfway back to the kitchen, debating if she needed caffeine for the short drive home, when the silence was split by a blood curdling scream from the bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Story is complete in 12 chapters-doing a final check before posting remainder.

Chapter 3

"It's just pavor nocturnus," Maura said, as if that answered everything.

It was the first articulate thing she had said since Jane burst into the bedroom and found her pulled into a gasping ball of terror. Fumbling for the lights, taking Maura's face in her hands, Jane had steadily, calmly talked her back to coherence while somehow managing to conceal her own fear.

Jane counted to three before blurting, "Sorry, I missed that day in Latin class. You wanna translate?" She had run back into the bedroom in such a blind panic that she had forgotten to open the door and rammed the knob into her own hipbone with such force that she knew she would have to wear her gun in a shoulder holster for a week.

"Night terrors. It's an actual DSM-IV diagnosis," Maura said, and there was a defensive edge in her voice. "Waking abruptly with a scream, increased heart rate, increased perspiration, inconsolable fear, inability to remember details of the episode…"

"Hey, hey, I believe you," Jane said quietly. Her own pulse was still racing at the echo of the heart-rending scream, and she thought it was a miracle that her mother hadn't come crashing through the back door, probably with Lt. Cavanaugh in tow. She moved onto the bed, sitting with one arm around Maura, rocking her slightly though she wasn't sure which one of them she was comforting more. "What scared you? Do you want to tell me?"

"I don't know." Maura's eyes were closed and the answer was sharp and definite. Jane felt the impulse to shoot back a follow-up and swallowed it. This wasn't the interrogation room and now wasn't the time. "It was so dark."

"You know what Ma says? She says if you wait until after breakfast to tell someone about your bad dream that it won't come true. So if you can just hold off another 7 hours, then I think you're clear."

Maura wiped at her cheeks with both hands, trying to tidy herself as best she could. Jane reached behind her to retrieve a box of tissues from the nightstand which was gratefully accepted. "In Cuban culture," Maura said between sniffles, "they believe that sharing a nightmare before breakfast will ensure it doesn't come true. But conversely, Jamaicans believe that you should wait until after breakfast. Is your mother Jamaican?"

"No, I…I think she would've told me. Have you thought any more about releasing that app of everything that's in your brain?"

Maura shook her head, blowing one last time. "You just say that to make me feel better."

"Is it working?"

Maura's thin shoulders shrugged but a tiny smile had crept out. "I always feel better when you're here. I'm sorry. I guess all the travel just took more out of me than I thought. I kept thinking the whole time I was gone that…" She hesitated, the corner of one lip caught between her teeth. "I kept thinking that I should be tougher, like you, and not be bothered by things like dirt and bad food and a lumpy cot and sleeping in a tent. I imagined all the jokes you would be making if you were there and it was like you really were there with me."

"And to think you left all that to come home to my family? Yeesh." She hugged Maura more tightly then, as if she could squeeze away the last trace of the lingering fear.

"Thank you," Maura whispered. "I think I can go back to sleep now." Her expression was so determined and simultaneously miserable that it was all Jane could do not to succumb to the genetic Rizzoli urge to scrub her knuckles over Maura's head.

"Are you sure? We can stay up if it would help, or whatever it is we're supposed to do on a sleepover. This may surprise you," Jane said with mock seriousness, "but I didn't get invited to very many slumber parties."

"Me either! I think it was because I didn't know anyone my own age."

"No," Jane chuckled, "it's because there's no one else in your league."

She fetched a glass of water from the bathroom and insisted that Maura drink at least half, lying and saying she had read something about long flights and dehydration. If she were being honest with herself, she had no idea what to do and that was a very uncomfortable position for a homicide detective to be in.

Jane took the glass back and set it a careful margin away from the edge of the nightstand before she stood. "Promise you'll yell if you need anything? Actually," she raised one hand, "I think you've got a handle on that."

Maura managed a smile at that and promised as she settled back beneath the covers.

Jane made a show of turning out the lights, but stood outside the cracked door watching until Maura nodded off before she returned to the couch and sentenced herself to a night of watching Australian Rules Football with the sound turned down, which somehow made just as much sense as listening with the commentary.

There was no question as to whether she would be going back to her own apartment that night, or if she would be able to sleep at all.

* * *

As the light ahead turned yellow, Jane slowed immediately and brought the Subaru to a stop several yards in advance of the crosswalk.

"That's interesting."

Jane stifled a yawn and kept staring intently at the stoplight. "What is?" She had survived the morning so far by the virtue of the espresso setting on the rocket launcher Maura called a coffee maker, but she had a feeling that if she looked her friend in the eye that she might break down yawning.

"Usually when faced by an oncoming yellow caution light, you take the opportunity to test the law of physics which states that velocity is the rate of change of displacement with time."

"Maybe…" Jane sighed. "Maybe I don't have quite enough in my little Flintstone legs to pull that off this morning." She was lucky at this point to hold her eyelids open at all, but she didn't think saying that would help matters any.

"Have you thought about using premium gasoline? I'm not certain that they can verify all their claims, but there is research that indicates the ignition timing will be closer to optimum when using the recommended octane for your vehicle."

"Maybe I'll budget my Christmas bonus so I'll have a little extra every month for high test."

Maura cocked her head, blinking rapidly. "You got a Christmas bonus? I'm a public employee too; I didn't get a Christmas bonus."

The light changed and Jane carefully depressed the accelerator. "That was a joke, but I don't think either one of us is on all cylinders right now, if you want to keep up the car metaphors. Are you sure you're OK with going in to work?" Jane glanced over at Maura, trying to catch an unguarded expression. "Maybe you should take another day."

"I'm perfectly fine," Maura insisted. "It was just a bad dream—lack of sleep, then too much of your mother's lasagna, which I believe is under review by the American Heart Association."

"See now that's a joke!" Jane flashed a grin, encouraged by that small step.

"I submitted her recipe to their database for a nutritional analysis. They were very concerned."

"Really?" Jane felt her stomach sink a little at the thought of what would happen if Maura convinced her mother to revise the recipe in any way, or to substitute something like pressed polenta for the rich layers of noodles. Family dinners, already tense at best when she and Tommy were at each other, were peaceful at least when everyone was too busy chewing to argue.

"Jane, thank you." Maura's voice was quieter now, losing the quirky, bird-like tone it took on when she became fascinated by some new topic. "I know last night wasn't very comfortable and I really appreciate what you did."

"No," Jane lied, "I love sleeping on your couch. It's so…springy." _I think one is embedded in my spine right now._

"You didn't have to."

In that, Maura Isles was completely and utterly wrong in a way that she hadn't been since she had thought the Boston College Hail Mary was something the students did weekly at chapel. If she thought that Jane was going to leave her alone for so much as a second after an episode like last night, then she simply hadn't been paying attention.

"Hey, who was it that stayed on my couch and looked all badass with my gun when a serial killer was after me?"

"Oh." Maura gave a small quick smile and half raised her hand. "That was me."

"Hell yeah, that was you."

* * *

By the time they had parked, Jane had nearly convinced that she was making something out of nothing. When they got to the elevator, she even agreed to let Maura descend to the Lair of the Dead on her own without a personal escort and went on her own way up to her desk in Homicide She checked her reflection in the elevator door and decided that she should bypass the café until she was a little more awake and could field any questions her mother might have about the black smudges under her eyes that made her look like an NFL safety.

Threading her way through the maze of desks that led to Homicide, Jane stopped abruptly. "What's this?" She pointed at the brown plastic pet carrier that was parked on top of her desk and definitely hadn't been there when she left the night before. "Korsak, that'd better be evidence."

Without looking up, the sergeant calmly turned over the report page he had been filling out and continued on the following page.

"Rockford was a witness." Detective Barry Frost leaned back in his chair, gesturing at the cat who somehow filled the entire pet carrier. Tufts of orange fur were sticking out of the air holes which left Jane wondering how the cat was able to breathe at all. "Now he's in protective custody."

"A witness to what, a cat napping? Did you even check for a collar this time?" Jane demanded.

"I know who he belongs to," Korsak said, still without looking up.

"Our victim." Frost opened the case file, still slender at this point but already grown to a quarter inch thick with witness statements. "The call you got out of last night? Rape and assault, college student."

"Wait, we're Homicide—who's dead?"

"We thought the girl was." Korsak was trying to retrieve his tie now from Rockford's grasp and steadily losing ground. "She was at the hospital before they got a pulse back and it's still touch and go."

Jane frowned and somehow sensed her mother invisibly standing behind her and telling her that her face would get stuck that way if she weren't careful. "So…we had a victim and now we don't? But we might have her back?"

"You're catching on." Frost grinned and kicked one foot onto his desk. "But by then we'd already done all the interviews. Wait, excuse me, _I_ had done all the interviews. Someone else was too busy having dinner with her BFF and catching up on how she spent her summer vacation."

"If only," Jane groaned. "Jet lag and Maura don't mix very well—don't ask."

"I'm sorry I couldn't make it, you know…work." Frost gave her a cherubic _whaddya gonna do_ look that shouldn't have worked on her since she was the one who had taught it to him…but somehow it always did. "I'll run down and say hi later and see the pictures."

"Yeah, pictures." That was the other weird thing, Jane realized. Maura had barely said anything about the trip at all, unless someone asked, and even then, she had found ways to bring the conversation back to how things had been in Boston while she was gone. "I don't know if she has any, Frost. She lost her phone while she was there and I think that's the only camera she had."

"But she bought eight new death masks, right? Because what she has isn't creepy enough."

Jane shook her head slowly. "I don't think so. They lost her luggage, so you might not wanna ask. Don't worry, she understood why you couldn't make it with the case. Go ahead and sum it up for me." She edged around the desk, giving Rockford a wide berth. Korsak had managed to unknot his tie and surrendered it to the cat who was busily flossing his teeth on the narrow end.

"Christina Rudolph, 21, senior at Boston Cambridge University. It's mid-terms for summer semester, so she's studying and her roommate goes out on a pizza run. Roommate comes back and in the 45 minutes she was gone, someone broke in, assaulted Tina in every sense of the word and left her for dead."

"Forced entry?"

Frost made a face that was somewhere between regret and reproach. "Open bathroom window."

Jane had spun the file around on the desk, searching for the address. "In _that_ neighborhood? Wow—I wouldn't leave my apartment out in the open there."

"Super keeps saying he'll fix the air."

Jane turned on her heel and Frost quickly straightened to stand beside her to face the young woman now standing at their desk. Frankie Rizzoli, uniformed escort, stood beside her with his hands looped into his utility belt.

"I'm the one who left the window open," she said quietly. Her straight dark hair fell in a curtain against one side of her face; the visible eye was bloodshot.

"This is, ah, Heather Marks. The," Frankie gestured, helpless and after the fact, "victim's roommate."

Jane instantly felt a wave of heat rush to her face. _Open mouth, insert foot, shove it all the way down_. "I'm so sorry," she said instantly. "I know that didn't sound right. I'm very sorry for what happened to your friend and we're going to do everything we can to catch the person responsible."

Heather shook her head, eyes half closed. "Trust me, it's nothing I haven't already said to myself. I just wanted to come down as soon as I could. Detective Frost, you said you wanted to do an interview?"

The young woman looked like she had slept in her clothes, if she had slept at all, but kept her voice controlled and well modulated. She stood nearly as tall as Frost, wearing dark blue jeans and a red scoop necked t-shirt. Her hands were stuffed into her pockets. Jane wondered if they were curled into fists.

Frost shrugged into his suit jacket, collecting the file and finishing off the last of his coffee. "Thanks for coming down so soon, Ms. Marks. I wanted to go over your statement again in a little more detail since you've had a night to sleep on things. Maybe we can come up with a few things to fill in the gaps."

"I don't know that I slept, but sure, anything you need."

Jane realized then what looked so familiar about the young woman's expression—it was what had been staring back at her in the mirror that morning, a purposeful tension that came from some dangerous cocktail of guilt and confusion. A little voice in her gut was telling her that she shouldn't dismiss what had happened with Maura last night so quickly, and she was doing her damndest to ignore that little voice. What was she missing?

Heather spotted the pet carrier and made a little half-step back. "Thanks for taking care of Rocky. Since the apartment is taped off, I'm staying with my aunt and her building won't allow pets."

Jane glanced at Frost and mouthed _Rocky?_ Frost returned a small shrug that seemed to say Korsak had finally guessed one right.

Korsak smiled beneficently at the caged animal. "It's no trouble. Rocky's a sweet boy, aren't you?" He extended the back of his hand toward the carrier and quickly jerked it back as the cat's paw shot through an air hole, clawing after him.

"Might wanna back off," Jane warned. "I don't know if they'll let you claim worker's comp for that."

That drew the first smile out of Heather. "Tina's the only person he doesn't shred on sight, but if you don't mind keeping him a few more days until she can come home, I'd really appreciate it."

Frost shot Jane a look that asked if anyone had updated Heather Marks on her roommate's prognosis or if it was likely she would be leaving the hospital at all. She made a quick gesture, passing her hand over her throat, to cut him off. Then just as suddenly, a thought occurred to her.

"Just a sec—you said Rocky here doesn't like anyone except your roommate?"

"He hates everyone," Heather said simply. "They stamped his vet file with this big label that says 'Uncooperative'. Why?"

Jane snagged a pen from the cup on her desk and carefully extended it towards the front of the pet carrier. After a moment's silence, a paw shot out from between the grating and grasped the pen cap. Jane tugged back, letting the cat fight and pull at the pen until his claws fully unsheathed. Three of the talons gleamed a dark rusty brown against the cat's bright orange fur.

"What _is_ that?" Frost asked. He was leaning in as close as he could but still keeping a safe distance.

Jane narrowed her mouth in a grim smile. "I think this fella took a chunk out of our suspect."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Jane held back the morgue door for Korsak who eased through it with the pet carrier held at a full arm's length. As it turned out, the only thing Rocky disliked more than sitting in his carrier was actually being carried somewhere in it. Even the elevator had been a traumatic experience for him, and if Jane understood the warbling screams correctly he would be contacting his lawyer as soon as they let him out.

"Hey, Maura, didn't you say you always wanted to be a vet?" Jane peered through the morgue which was unusually, well, dead. "Maur, you here?"

"Hi, Dr. Isles just ran out, but I think she'll be back in an hour."

Jane looked down to find that Maura's assistant, Susie Chang, had somehow materialized literally under her nose. The tech was wearing her standard lab coat and peering up through glasses that Jane swore she had made for herself out of petri dishes.

"Did she say where she was going?"

"No, just that she had an errand to run. Do you want me to give her a message?"

Jane shrugged and told herself this was actually good news. Maura must be feeling better, and if she decided to do something inane like shoe shopping on the way back to the station, then she would be the only one to suffer.

"Nah, that's fine. Actually, we have a little project I think you could help us with. Do you have a pair of something we can use for nail clippers? Ones with really, really long handles."

While Susie searched the instrument trays and came up with a long-handled pair of scissors with a curved angle to the shears tips, Jane wrapped her hand in her blazer and eased open the door to the pet carrier. As she had predicted, Rocky fixated on her hand and threw himself at it, gnawing at the padding, which gave Korsak just enough time to toss a towel over the cat and wrap the animal tightly within the folds.

"Scratch lion tamer off the list," Jane muttered. A two inch gouge long now gaped in one shoulder, but she thought her hair would cover it. Maybe Maura could recommend a seamstress.

Jane noticed that Susie seemed to be inching backwards towards the office area instead of coming forward with the scissors. "You can't cut his nails from over there," she said. "C'mon, it'll only take a second."

"I know a really good vet on Newbury," Susie said nervously. Rocky had now managed to expand to twice his normal size and was chewing through one fold of the towel.

"Senior Criminalist Chang, are you trying to impede the progress of a homicide investigation?"

"N-no?"

"Actually, the victim came back to life," Korsak said. "I think it's just assault now."

"Do you mind?" Jane hissed at him before glaring back at Susie. "You want to help the police, yes? Because you want to keep your job and you don't want me to tell your hunky morgue boy, Alex, that you were a coward and refused to help, right?"

Susie glanced between Rocky and Jane, as if trying to decide which she were more afraid of. At times like this, Jane wished she had an invisible rearview mirror that would show her what Korsak was doing behind her back, but whatever silent gestures he was making finally convinced Susie to take her chances with the cat.

Jane decided that the blazer was a loss at this point and wrapped her hand up again. "Just be ready when he strikes. I want as many as you can get off the right paw." As she slowly waved her hand, the cat's ears flattened back, vanishing completely against his skull, and his widening pupils completely blacked out his eyes.

Quicker than she could blink, Rocky sank his claws into the blazer and dug in. Jane pulled against him, extending his arms to give him the fight he was looking for. Flexing, his talons sank even further in and she pulled back just enough to expose them to the quick.

"Now!" Jane barked. Susie nearly dropped the shears, but managed to quickly slip the blades around three of the four tips on Rocky's right paw before he even realized that there was a new enemy in the picture. For all her nervousness, her training kicked in and Susie scooped up the clipped nails into a plastic evidence bag and quickly sealed it.

"Get that to the crime lab ASAP and have them test it for blood, DNA, scrapings, anything they can get. I want you to contact me as soon as you hear back." Jane knew Susie well enough to know that the last part was unnecessary, but from the noises Korsak was making she didn't want to be any part of the struggle to put Rocky back in his cage. She refused to turn around or acknowledge any of his muffled requests for help until she heard the cage door shut.

"I'm sorry, Sgt. Korsak, did you say something?"

Korsak gave her a wry, disgusted look and tossed a wadded shirt at her which she reflexively backhanded.

"What is this, dead people stuff?" Jane tossed it back at her former partner and he let it sail by with a grin.

"It's your softball jersey. I put it in the carrier with Rocky last night when we were at Maura's. It's very soothing for them to be able to smell your scent."

"So now he can _track_ me to my apartment? Hey, wait," Jane protested, "what was my jersey doing at Maura's?"

"You tell me." Korsak chuckled, the line of his teeth breaking through his neat goatee. He tossed the shirt back to her. "I found it wadded up in the utility room. Don't act like we don't know your mother still does your laundry, and Frankie's too."

Jane held the jersey up and glared at it, then her eyes widened in surprise as she saw the front emblazoned with the Homicide Division's team logo in red. The lower left flank of the jersey was stiff with mud, and…her eyes narrowed at the sight of the reddish brown stain that Korsak had apparently missed. She hastily rolled it up again.

"Yeah, yeah, I remember now." _What was it every good lie needed_, she thought, _a little detail_? "I slid into second when we beat Vice in the playoffs last month and Ma was supposed to try and work on the stain. Guess who dropped the ball on that one?"

Korsak had conscripted one of the rolling carts to put Rocky's carrier on for the ride back up to Homicide, with a promise to send it back as soon as he could. "I'm stopping by the café for some coffee when I head up—how much will it cost for me not to tell your mother you said that?"

"If you get two, I'll forgive you for putting my lucky jersey in with The Shredinator." Jane stared him down until he left with Rocky in tow. "Only one sugar!" she yelled after him.

Even though she wasn't operating at full capacity, Jane knew two things for certain: that stain wasn't mud and her real lucky jersey was hanging in her own closet, even though Maura had suspicions that she never hung her clothes up at all but just lived from laundry basket to hamper. She also knew a way to get some answers.

"Hey, thanks for that," Jane said to Susie. The lab tech seemed to be waiting for everyone to leave so she could start the next part of the analysis process. "That was, ah, really tough, going in like that. Taking one for the team. You could've gotten hurt."

Susie brightened visibly and clutched the evidence bag a little more closely. "My mother had a parakeet."

Jane waited. Nothing followed. "And it...?"

"It was really mean and tried to bite my earrings off. It takes a lot to scare me," she confided.

"Riiigght. Well, that's good." Jane nodded, trying to think of what she could possibly say. "Good training. Hey, could you run this shirt too when you send over the nail clippings? I wanna be sure that Rocky didn't pick anything up while he was sleeping on it." She hoped it sounded like a casual afterthought and not the sole reason that she had stayed behind, to ask while Korsak was out of earshot.

"Sure, I can have the crime lab check it. Do you want me to check it against the contamination profiles since you and Sgt. Korsak handled it?"

"That is a _great_ idea," Jane said, eyes wide. _And I didn't even have to suggest it_. "And since it was at Dr. Isles' house, can you check for her too?"

"Sure, we keep profiles for everyone who might handle evidence."

"Great, that's great." Jane forced herself to smile, tapping one loose fist against her thigh. "And just come to me about it, OK? I want to be the one to give Korsak a hard time in case he screwed anything up."

Somehow Jane managed to walk from the morgue, out through the double doors and to the elevator lobby and into the elevator before her composure began to crack. When the doors closed, she lurched backward, bracing her back in the corner of the elevator carriage, her chest tight and suddenly straining for air. "My God," she whispered. "Maura, what the hell is going on?"

Yes, she knew the jersey. She remembered everything about the day she had special ordered it from the team's supplier. She had specified extra small and even tried to fold it nicely with the logo in the front when she had given it to Maura and told her that even though she had a terrible swing and no understanding of the infield fly rule that that there would always be a spot on the team for her.

She remembered saying goodbye to Maura at the airport two weeks ago and catching a glimpse of the jersey buttoned beneath the doctor's overshirt, and she had grinned stupidly at the thought that Maura had been so touched by the gift that she wanted to take it with her to another continent.

The question wasn't who it belonged to or even what the reddish brown stain was: she had seen enough blood to know that at least. What she needed to know was what the hell had happened and why was Maura hiding it from her?

* * *

Maura Isles sat quietly behind the wheel of her Lexus, waiting for the final strains of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2 to conclude before climbing out and crossing the 15 yards to her own door, which somehow felt more like 15 miles away. She wondered what she would do if they played Dvorak's New World Symphony next. She was unreasonably fond of the fourth movement, which would mean staying in her car for another 45 minutes.

The music shifted from Rachmaninoff to Wagner and Maura turned off the ignition. The day had been long and dark enough without adding Germans to the mix.

Simply climbing out of the car took more out of her than she had anticipated. The doctor she had seen that morning, the errand she had vaguely described to her assistant as 'an appointment' in her fourth non-lie of the day, had told her it would be four weeks at least before she could expect to have her full range of motion back, but that she had escaped any lasting physical injury. The antibiotics would help at least with the recovery, but there wasn't a prescription for memory.

Even walking took more energy than Maura had left after her sleepless night. She knew Jane had waited by her bedroom door, alert for any sound, and so Maura had lain awake and perfectly still for hours until her alarm. It was the only way she could guarantee the dream wouldn't come back again, and she didn't think she could mislead Jane a second time.

She hadn't lied, Maura reminded herself as she reached the door. She just hadn't said everything she knew, and that had passed the lie test as far as her hive reflex was concerned. The rest of her though was falling apart. Her eyes were aching from lack of sleep and it felt as though sand grit had been poured under her lids. She had told herself that if she could just get back to Boston, she would be all right, but somehow her subconscious mind hadn't gotten the message.

The pain returned suddenly, seizing her side, and she stopped short. She kept one hand on the door lintel for balance and realized that she must look ridiculous, like one of those game show models, showing off everything you could win for guessing the correct price. _This lovely two storey home and cottage could all be yours…_

Once she had recovered her breath, Maura braced herself for the silence of an empty house, which was simultaneously a relief and yet unnerving. She had been counting on familiar surroundings to help her readjust but while her body was back in America, her mind was a thousand miles away in Burundi, standing in the remnants of a war-torn village.

Silence, though, was definitely not what greeted her.

"…and why the god_damn_ corkscrew can't just be where a normal person would put it."

Maura set her handbag down on the kitchen island and peered over at Jane as she had practically crawled inside the island's storage cabinet.

"I thought Girl Sprouts always carried a Swiss Army Knife," she said wryly.

Jane cracked her head against the cabinet's roof and even more creative cursing followed as she tried to extract herself. "No, actually, after Chelsea Carpenter got caught with a bottle of Bordeaux on the Spring Break Sleepover, they made us dump our pockets."

"Something tells me you found a way around that." Maura met Jane's mock innocent smile with her own. "I wasn't expecting you—is everything OK?"

"Great, perfect, never better."

Maura considered the jumble of items sprawled across her countertop which had been pristine just that morning. "Pizza, frozen yogurt, and three bottles of wine? That looks like a plan."

Jane exhaled contritely. "You got me, yes. To turn you into a fat, lazy alcoholic. How'm I doing so far?"

"That depends on the toppings." Maura crossed her arms in counterpoint and adopted her toughest expression, which usually just made Jane laugh.

Jane flipped back the lid of the pizza box to reveal caramelized onions, sun-dried tomatoes and Portobello mushrooms. Somehow she kept a straight face despite her historical protestations that any pizza with vegetables on it should be fed directly to Bass the tortoise.

Maura felt an unexpected twinge which she realized was actually hunger. "Fancy," she said, and smiled. "So what will you be eating?"

Jane raised the pizza box and Maura saw there was a second box beneath it. "Carnivore Classic, thank you."

Maura fetched two wine glasses from the cabinet and retrieved the corkscrew from the sideboard drawer. "Three bottles—hedging your bets?"

Jane held up the frozen yogurt and pointed at the label: mocha mint. "I didn't know what goes with swirl, which, by the way, is still not really a flavor."

"What about beer instead?"

Jane's expression collapsed in relief. "Oh God, yes. I was going to be a good sport, but I could really use one after today. You will not _believe_ what happened with that damn cat Korsak rescued. And your little Susie Q. is tougher than she looks."

As Jane told her what had happened while she was out and how they had re-enacted _Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom_ in the middle of the morgue, Maura felt her mind watching from a slight distance. The banter, the stories, all felt so normal that it was somehow conversely jarring. Why couldn't she stop thinking about…

_Nothing happened_, her mind insisted. _You have nothing to worry about. You survived, you're home. There are lots of things you don't tell Jane, like what you really paid for the Alexander McQueen original that she mistook for a paperweight. This is no different—there's nothing she could do, what's done is done._

She was tired, so tired of trying to hold her mind together and appear as though everything were normal. She shouldn't have to do that with Jane of all people, but in the end Jane was the one she needed to hide the truth from the most. If Jane knew what had happened, every detail of that afternoon, then it would devastate her. Maura couldn't bear knowing what that would do to her friend, and their friendship, when she had the power to protect her by simply holding it all within, so what choice was there?

Maura found the single longneck beer she kept in the back of the fridge for Jane, in case of emergency. When she passed it over, she saw the scars still visible on her friend's hands, marks left by a deranged serial killer, one they had faced together. That was over and done too, Hoyt was dead, but the scars remained. Was this what the map of her mind looked like now, one long jagged scar?

Maura had to turn away before her face betrayed her and began pulling plates out of the china cabinet. "Is your mother joining us?" She had taken two plates down already and hesitated, her hand on a third.

Jane shook her head, half a slice already stuffed into her mouth. "Nuh-uh. Jus' us. Izzat OK?"

Maura knew she shouldn't be alone, but being with _people_ was more than she could handle; but Jane wasn't just anyone. She was the only person who could somehow make Maura feel better just by showing up, even if the very next sentence out of her mouth was riddled with irritating factual inaccuracies and baffling slang of dubious etymological origin.

"More than OK."

"Good, because you won't believe what my stupid cable company did. They're not carrying West Coast games anymore because of some stupid franchising rule, but I checked—you get 'em." Jane announced this, eyes wide, like she had just discovered that the Met would be broadcasting live every night that week, straight to the television, and by God they were going to watch. To demonstrate, she turned on the television which by no coincidence was already on the correct channel.

"This is important because?" Maura had decided she could safely manage two slices and served Jane two more on top of what she had already taken.

"Maura…we've been over this. We play games, they count up how many we win, and then the teams that have the most get prizes. Tonight is really important for us—if we beat the Angels, then we can move into first place."

"And what position is it that you play?"

"#1 fan," Jane shot back. She pointed at her t-shirt, blazoned with "Property of Boston Red Sox Athletic Department".

Maura knew she wasn't as focused as she could be, but nothing Jane said was making any sense. "But that's not the Red Sox." She set down the pizza plates on the coffee table and pointed at the uniformed players lined up for the National Anthem. "Their socks aren't red at all. That's burnt orange at best and not very flattering."

"But if the Giants win the National, then they'll be the ones the BoSox will face in the Series and with that excuse for a bullpen we can take them in five." Jane made little falling domino motions with her hands as she walked around to the other side of the couch. Maura wasn't certain if they had ever discussed it, but somehow Jane had gotten very attached to the side closest to the refrigerator.

"So the enemy of your enemy is your friend?"

Jane raised her beer in a quick salute. "That's my girl. Hey…" She stopped, quickly cocking her head at Maura. "Are you OK?"

"Why?" _Don't say yes, that would be a lie._

"You had this funny look, like you hit your toe and you were trying not to show it. You're not wearing those eight inch stilettos are you?" Jane leaned over to look at her Maura's feet which were in a perfectly sensible pair of black flats

"No, nothing special." Maura stared at her feet—even they were depressing her. She just couldn't bring herself to care about clothes today, which Jane would have said was a sure sign that something was wrong. Besides, she could barely walk on her feet as it was. A reason, she had to come up with a reason. "I don't think anyone should try to wear heels when they haven't had enough sleep. And I'm fine, I've just been getting little stitches in my side," she said, forcing herself to smile. "It'll get better if I don't move around too much."

It wasn't a lie, her conscience chanted, it wasn't a lie. It wasn't her fault that the two concepts were spelled exactly the same. At least these stitches had been made in a sterile environment by a competent surgeon, replacing the patch job she had managed for herself when she crossed the border into Tanzania and reached Dar Es Salaam on the eastern coast. That first attempt had been done without any local anesthetic and she could still feel the tug of thread as it passed through her skin. The sutures had been rough and crooked as her hands shook with pain and shock, but it had been the best she could manage. The dead at least wouldn't mind her trembling, but she had no business touching the living now.

_Do you still count?_ the whispered thought came. _You feel dead enough inside._

At least in Africa no one had asked questions, but Maura had needed to prepare a story for this morning, a factual but completely inaccurate account of how she had come by the 6-inch gash. She had known that once the doctor, someone who owed her a quiet favor, saw the ragged stitches that he would insist they be re-done. She had planned it that way, knowing he wouldn't have time then to ask many questions when he had thought this would be a quick consultation as a favor to a colleague. There wouldn't be time to ask her to take off the rest of her clothes either.

"You should eat a banana."

Maura blinked, coming back to herself. "I'm sorry?"

"A banana," Jane repeated. "It's good for stitches and cramps, or that's what my coaches always said. Do you have some or did Ma eat them all? I can go back to the store."

Maura thought about explaining that medical science still hadn't found the exact cause of stitches in the side and that bananas, the athletic panacea for all that ailed you, wouldn't help, but that wasn't completely true. It was Jane's earnest expression, the poised, expectant look in her face, one hand already searching her pocket for her keys, that said she would drive to New York if she had to in order to find anything Maura needed—that was what made her feel better.

She felt a sudden, irrational urge to start crying, which she didn't think Jane would believe was because of the caramelized onions, and she ruthlessly shoved it aside. Instead, Maura smiled and sat down, patting the couch to convince Jane to stand down from Defcon 2.

"I've got everything I need right here," she said.

And that was the complete and utter truth.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Jane thought that by the time the evening was over she was going to need glasses, maybe bifocals. It was hard enough trying to watch the entire field of play, but simultaneously keeping an eye on Maura was turning her cross-eyed.

Maura had eaten at least, even though her hands were trembling slightly, while keeping up a steady stream of chatter about baseball, which was suspicious in and of itself. She was as obvious as an eight-year-old trying to avoid bedtime and twice as adorable, if Jane hadn't been worried half out of her mind. As hard as it was, she managed to keep herself from blurting out questions—something along the lines of _What the hell is going on?—_and simply watched how her friend handled herself. It seemed that Maura was aware of the problem, putting down her pizza whenever the trembling started and wrapping her hands in her napkin until they steadied.

By the time they had finished dinner, Jane had decided not to ask directly about the jersey, not yet. Everything in her wanted to pull a dining room chair in front of where Maura sat perched on the couch, shine a Maglite in her eyes and demand the truth, but secrets could be like splinters and this one obviously wasn't ready to come out yet—digging for it might only make things worse. She would simply stay as close as she could and watch for any signs that Maura wanted to explain. And yes, OK, she really had wanted to watch the game, so it wasn't like she was lying.

"So…yay Giants?" Maura asked. She was sitting perfectly upright, hands clasped in her lap with her legs folded up in the lotus position on the couch. "I guess my mojo works with other teams too."

Jane was fairly certain that Maura had been trying to meditate the last three batters into strikeouts, and it had actually worked. "We may have to get your mojo registered with MLB if you keep this up. Now, I know I sound like a broken record, but you still look pretty tired. Do you think you can sleep tonight? I mean, do the Pavarotti nocturnes come back?"

"Pavor nocturnus. I would be guessing, but…"

"Oh God," Jane breathed, letting her head fall back. "The horror, the horror."

"…it's possible. Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Anything." Jane was instantly alert, sitting forward with elbows on knees.

"Would you stay, just for a while? I think the best sleep I've had since I got back was when I napped on the couch last night. There are studies that indicate that a combination of white noise and familiar surroundings can produce more satisfactory sleep patterns." Maura was steadily talking faster in the stumbling, breathless way she had when she was nervous. "They have lots of other games on, I checked. There's one whole channel with nothing but sports—did you know that?"

"Yeah, it's called ESPN, honey. We go way back." Jane took the remote out of her hand as if she were confiscating a weapon. "I don't care what your studies say—all you have to do is ask."

"Oh, I got you a present too." Maura reached to retrieve her handbag, pulled out a small plastic bag from a local drugstore and produced a blue toothbrush with red stripes.

Jane took the toothbrush and examined it critically. "Are you sure you're ready for this kind of commitment?"

"It's Boston Red Sox colors. I checked." Maura turned the bag upside down and shook out two packs of floss. "You have some plaque buildup on your bicuspids. I don't want that on my conscience." She made a brushing motion with one hand, up and down, up and down.

Jane dutifully trudged off to the bathroom and when she returned, Maura had changed into pajamas with a lemon-yellow floral print and was trailing two pillows and a blanket behind her. Jane returned to her accustomed spot on the couch and pretended to focus on finding another game, but couldn't stop glancing at Maura who was fussing like some kind of nesting songbird.

"Do you want to reupholster first?" she asked at last.

Maura stopped, stricken with a worried look. "It clashes doesn't it? I knew it wasn't going to work with the curtains, but I just fell in love with them."

Jane snatched the gray fleece blanket away and unfolded it herself. "Relax, Martha Stewart's not going to show up for home inspection. It's been a long day and whatever is wrong with your interior decorating, not that anything is, will still be here tomorrow." She pulled one of the pillows into her lap and made a violent attempt to fluff it. "Were you this difficult when you were a kid? You probably snuck medical textbooks under the covers when you were supposed to be napping."

The way Maura's lips quirked told Jane that this had been the least of it. "I never understood the point of naps, actually. I think last night was the first time I ever took one on purpose."

She seemed to have the knack down now though, Jane thought, as Maura crawled beneath the blanket and stretched out to her full length. "Comfy?" she asked dryly. "I don't want to be the reason you walk around with a crick in your neck."

"Surprisingly so." Maura shifted slightly, settling in, and Jane tucked stray edges of the blanket in. "Yes, I think I understand why people take naps now."

"What the hell did you think the couch was for?" Jane chuckled.

"Your family."

"Family—I got 'em. Hey, you would tell us if we get too much, right? I know you say Ma can stay and everything, and we really appreciate it with the divorce, but if you need your space, just let me know."

"I was an only child—I've had enough space."

Jane thought she should say something in response to that, but was too busy not asking all the questions that were building in her mind. _The game, focus, focus…_ "Oh come on!" she blurted. "Really?"

"What, did the enemies score?" Maura sat up on one elbow, peering up at the screen. "Is my mojo not working?"

"All the mojo in New Orleans couldn't help this ump. He doesn't need glasses, he needs cataract surgery." Jane coaxed her into lying back down and helped retrieve the blanket. "Maybe you could volunteer your medical services, huh?"

Maura didn't say anything to that, but Jane could sense that she was wide awake now. Her body seemed stiffer, and there was something almost palpable in the silence.

"Hey," Jane said quietly. "You OK?" Maura still didn't say anything, then exhaled a careful breath as if she hadn't trusted herself.

"I don't think I'm a very good doctor, Jane."

"Wh—what the…shut the front door!" Jane caught herself just short of jumping off the couch and tumbling her friend to the floor. "You're a _terrific_ doctor!"

Maura turned on her back and stared up with eyes that were blank and resigned. "I'm a good medical examiner. There's a difference. I can speak for the dead; it's the living I seem to have problems with."

"Screw the living," Jane grinned fiercely. "We're overrated. No one else can do what you do. I've seen you…wait, is this about Africa?" At last, the opening she was looking for. "I didn't want to push you, but you've been kind of…not Maura since you got back."

Before she left, Jane had been worried that her friend might get attached to orphaned triplets and try to bring them home with her, but…but what if she had confronted a tragedy, something that she couldn't fix? In a way, Jane reasoned, that would be the worst thing possible for someone as relatively sheltered as Maura.

"Burundi was hard," she admitted. "I used to think I was an experienced traveler, that I'd seen the world, but I've only been to the nice places. Going there made me think about a lot of things, about what I'm trying to do and if any of it really matters. I used to think that I was making a difference, but then I actually left the morgue and now I can't ignore how many people there are who need help, and it's not enough to wait until they're dead before I do something."

Jane felt a wash of relief flood through her mixed with adrenaline. She had fallen victim to her own Achilles heel, not able to take her head out of work. A bloodstain had automatically meant one thing to her, but Maura had gone on the trip as a medical doctor, not an observing coroner. Something had gone wrong, she hadn't been able to save someone, and wound up with blood on her hands, literally and figuratively. Maura knew all about the dead, but very little about dying. The closest she had ever come to losing a patient was the time they had hidden all the bodies on her for April Fool's.

Jane reached out to find Maura's hand again, folding it within her own. The trembling gradually stopped and something seemed to steady in Maura's eyes at the same time. "Sweetie, you sacrificed your time off and did something that 99% of the world would never even think to do. How come it is that you're the only person who doesn't get how amazing you are?"

Maura let out a self-deprecating little laugh and somehow managed to look even more forlorn.

"What we do for a living is special, Maur. It's not possible to save everyone, but we can help catch the ones responsible, and if we don't, then those people will just hurt more people. We're working from the other end of the cycle, and it's sad sometimes because we don't get to see all the lives we save when we stop someone from committing even more crimes."

Maura nodded but her eyes had welled with tears now that she managed to fight off, although Jane thought she might cry herself. _Goddamn lactalicular amigdylanicus gland_, she thought furiously.

"I'm sorry, I've just been sort of unpredictable and this sleep thing isn't helping," Maura apologized.

Jane's eyebrows shot up. "Sleep thing? Wow, is that the official medical term, Dr. Isles?"

"It's a good thing my patients can't send complaints in to the board." Maura's laugh stretched just a note too long, stretched and brittle.

A small, steady alarm began in the back of Jane's mind, like when that little wobble had started up in her bicycle the first time she tried to take it down the hill behind Riley's Grocery, gone too fast and wound up in the ditch with a broken arm. Some frames just weren't strong enough for the stress that got put on them; she needed to find a way to get Maura's mind off this until she had recovered enough to have a more straightforward talk about what had happened. The splinter had surfaced, but this was as far as it would go for now.

"You know what?" Jane glanced back at the game and saw that somehow the Mariners, arguably her least favorite team in history simply because Special Agent Dean liked them, were in danger of going three up on the Rangers. "I see at least two more games that _desperately_ need your mojo. Do you think if I sit here like the perfect human pillow that you can try put the whammy on them and drift off a little?"

Maura nodded, trying to unobtrusively sniffle. "Thank you," she whispered.

"I'll remind you of that at Christmas. Now go to sleep or I'll have to start singing lullabyes and nobody wants that."

* * *

Two hours later, in keeping with the 7th inning stretch tradition, Jane tried to straighten out one leg at a time to ease the cramping when suddenly she felt her phone begin a bone jangling dance. She quickly snatched it out of the holster, grateful at least that she had remembered to set it to vibrate, and checked the incoming number.

She squinted at the display, then down at Maura who had drifted off when the Mariners had fallen behind in the second. By the fifth, she had been so out of it that she had slid her head off Jane's lap, taking the pillow with her, and was fast asleep on her end of the couch. So if she wasn't calling from the morgue, why did the caller ID say "Lair of the Dead"?

With a jolt, Jane remembered telling Susie Chang to contact her directly with the test results. Gingerly she climbed to her feet without disturbing Maura and tiptoed over to the kitchen before answering in a hushed tone.

"H'llo?"

"Detective Rizzoli?" Susie's normally quiet voice came bellowing across the line.

"Yeah, hang on."

Jane eased open the door to the utility room with exaggerated care and pulled it shut behind her. She flipped on the light and blinked for a moment to restore her sight. She drew back slightly, startled by all the blouses and skirts suspended from hangers. It felt like wandering into the petite section at Neiman Marcus. Apparently at least one person in America read the laundry labels and actually hand washed according to instructions.

"I'm here, go ahead."

"The crime lab has the test results back. Those nail clippings do have blood on them and they're extracting DNA to run against known offenders."

"How long do you think that will take?

"If I put a rush on it, maybe three or four days?"

Ordinarily Jane might have complained, but she knew that was as fast as she could expect the process to take, and if Maura had been the one telling her this then it might have taken at least two of those days just to get the estimate out of her.

"Thanks, Susie. I know it's late, I appreciate it."

"It's no trouble," the tech assured her. "We wanted…I just wanted you to know as soon as possible."

Jane wondered who the _we_ was supposed to be and exactly what went on in the morgue overnight, then just as quickly she shoved the thought into the file labeled Burn After Reading.

"What about the shirt I gave you to check—any contamination from that?"

"The nail samples were pure as far as our tests show, but there were some unusual findings from the shirt. I have it all printed up and I can email it to you if you want." A cautious note had entered Susie's already hesitant voice.

"Tell me now." In the utility room's enclosed space, her own voice echoed back to her with a menace she hadn't realized she had put in the words.

"All right, well, the lab confirmed that the stain was blood, but it doesn't match anything from the nail samples. We did get a hit on the contamination profiles though."

Jane felt her throat go dry, but she forced herself to ask. "Who?"

"Dr. Isles. It's her blood."

Slowly Jane felt her knees folding forward and she began to slide down to the floor with her back braced against the washing machine.

"Detective Rizzoli? Hello?" Susie's voice was coming from a very long ways down a tunnel where all her hope had vanished. She had been such an idiot to think that everything could be so simple, that she had found a way to explain everything that had happened.

"I'm here," Jane croaked. "I…I think…I talked to Dr. Isles," she lied. "There was an accident and she meant to…y'know, can you just hold onto that for me? I'll come pick up everything tomorrow."

"OK, but…are you sure about that?" Ordinarily that would have been the end of it, but now they had strayed into the realm of test results and Susie had her footing. "Because that doesn't really track with the rest of the findings."

Jane was cradling her forehead in one hand, feeling the pounding ache rising from her temples. "Go ahead."

"The lab also found significant traces of saline and white blood cells. When we see that, it's usually from tears. We can't always do much with that, but there were enough white blood cells to get a match with Dr. Isles also. And they also found bodily fluids which would include…"

"I know what bodily fluids are." Jane felt herself slide the rest of the way down, now sitting fully on the utility room floor. Her legs could only stretch partway and she instinctively braced one boot against the wall, as if that could stop the crash that was coming within. When she looked down at her phone, the call was disconnected but she didn't remember hanging up.

Her entire face had gone numb, gradually stretching down through her neck and into her chest where her heart was supposed to be. Everything Maura had told her tonight might be true, but none of it was adding up. Something had happened, something far worse than she was letting on, and somehow Maura had found a way to lie to her about it.

The first scream coming from the living room brought Jane staggering up to her knees, all the blood suddenly returning to her extremities. By the second scream, she was back into the house and kneeling in front of Maura who was staring, sightless and incoherent from the depth of a nightmare she had not yet wakened from.

"Sshhh, shhhh, hey, hush…I'm here, I'm here." Jane repeated the words, taking Maura's face in her hands as she tried to ease her friend out of the dream. "Listen to me, can you hear me? Maura, listen to me."

Blinking rapidly, Maura seemed to be seeking out her face and struggling to focus. Jane felt a sudden pressure on her wrist as it was suddenly wrapped in a strong, desperate grip, and she saw that Maura had seized her, as if fighting for an anchor to this reality. Jane moved onto the couch beside her, putting both arms around her friend until the shaking lessened and finally stopped. Jane didn't even realize that she had started to hum, the only song that would put TJ to sleep on his worst nights with colic, but it seemed to be working.

Maura's breathing gradually lost its ragged edge and the grip she had placed on Jane's wrist lessened as she returned to herself. Unsteadily, she tried to laugh and straighten up. It took everything Jane had to let her pull away.

"I suppose that answers that question," Maura said, struggling to smile. "Like lightning, pavor nocturnus can strike twice. I should probably be documenting all of this. There's a paper in it somewhere."

Jane knew enough now to spot the evasion now and let it go for now. She was in over her head, she knew that much, and she would say anything she had to buy time to find the help Maura needed.

"No, it was my fault," she said. "I got up to take a call and I was getting a drink and I let the cabinet door slam. It must've sounded like a cannon." She had on her very best apology face, the one that had convinced her mother not to ground her right before prom, and it seemed to be working now. "I'm so sorry, you were sleeping like a champ and everything. Promise you won't tell Tommy? He'd never let me watch TJ again."

Maura nodded, seeming nearly in control of herself now. She solemnly raised the wrong hand and said, "Your secret is safe with me."

_And yours with me_, Jane thought. _Even if you don't know how to tell me. God, Maura, please…let me help you._

Jane kept up a steady, soothing stream of rueful apologies, getting that drink from the kitchen and helping tuck Maura's feet in again. She knew how to distract with the best of them and Maura, she had to admit, was an easy target in her current state. A few trivia facts about the increasing number of no-hitters pitched in recent years easily kept her occupied until they were settled once more.

There was no chance that Jane would be falling asleep tonight, not after what she had just learned, and not all of it had come from the lab reports. She had heard something in the screams tonight, something she hadn't caught the night before: a single word, repeated in terror.

It wasn't much but it was a clue, and that at least was something Jane Rizzoli knew what to do with.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

This time it was Jane who woke up screaming.

"Jesus Christ!" she exploded as she pulled her legs up onto the couch and nearly went sprawling. "What-what…"

Maura came awake instantly, sitting up and seeing at once what had happened. "Bass, no!" she scolded. "Get down, you know you're not allowed on the couch." Ponderously, Bass turned his head to her, wavering in his resolve. It must be morning already, she thought, realizing that the light in the room wasn't coming from the television. Bass wasn't nocturnal as a rule and was on the prowl for breakfast.

Jane was sitting on the back of the couch now, her feet on the arm, as she stared wild-eyed down at the massive tortoise. "Climb on the couch? He honestly the fuck can climb on the _couch_?"

Maura nodded with a tiny shrug. "He gets lonely sometimes and I've been gone a lot."

"He's a turtle, Maura. Fine, tortoise, whatever. They don't have feelings." Jane though apparently did, especially where being woken up by a large African Spurred Tortoise trying to climb into her lap was concerned. "Let's make a deal. I'll bring him all the special organic crap he wants if he promises not to try to hump my leg ever again."

For a brief instant, laughing at Jane's horrified expression, Maura actually forgot herself. For that single moment, everything was back to normal and she felt a peace flooding through her that vanished all too quickly. The only reason Jane was still here was because of what happened last night, and at that thought the warmth vanished, draining away out through the hole in the bottom of her heart.

"He just wants breakfast, don't you?" She slid her hands under Bass' carapace and gently set his front feet down onto the floor "Come on, let's go see what we've got."

"Yeah," Jane called. "You go do that. And in three hours, when Bass finally gets to the kitchen, maybe we can try to hitch a ride to work on his back—he's just about big enough to carry us both."

"Very funny, Jane. She's not making fun of you, Bass. You're doing your best, aren't you?" Maura opened the refrigerator and found some of his favorite lettuce in the crisper. Angela had used it once accidentally for hamburger toppings, and Maura had to agree that it was tastier than the standard variety. Once Bass was happily nudging the leaves, she checked the clock and was startled to see how late it was. She had slept the rest of the night through after Jane had returned to stay with her and it was later than she had thought.

"Jane, I'm going to take a quick shower, but I can be ready when you are."

If she was going to face a full day at work, she needed at least a few moments alone to gather herself, to check the stitches and change the dressing. If she was really being honest with herself, she should strip for the full length mirror, but Maura hadn't been able to bring herself to do that yet. The shower was vulnerability enough.

When Maura returned, Jane had made a fair attempt at getting dressed with one of her interchangeable shirts that her mother had washed and left for her to pick up along with the rest of her laundry. Maura had a theory, which she had voiced more than once, that Jane lived on a steady diet of black suits because a) black never clashed with anything which made fashion decisions unnecessary, and b) it was resistant to dirt and wrinkles, although Jane had managed at times to overcome this property through great personal effort. That less than stellar foundation, combined with lack of sleep, left Jane looking like an underweight raccoon this morning.

"You understand that I'm choosing not to ask you if you're seriously going to go to work like that, yes?"

Jane glanced up at her, phone pinched between shoulder and ear. She had a cup of coffee in each hand.

"And you understand that I'm choosing not to ask you, yet again, why you can't just have normal people coffee creamer?" she hissed back. "No…no, not you," Jane said into the phone. "I'm talking to my partner. Yeah, she forgot creamer again. Why did I marry her then? No, we're not…look, just put me through to voicemail."

Jane stalked off to the other end of the living room, muttering into the phone while Maura fixed her coffee and was grateful that at least Jane hadn't tried to slip instant past her. By the time she returned, shoving the phone back into its holster, Jane looked a little calmer if not quite in control.

"What's going on?" Maura asked. She was relieved actually that Jane was thinking about work and not bringing up the night before. She had expected to be interrogated, at least a little. Was it possible that she had actually mastered lying? Maura wasn't certain if she should be happy about that or not.

Jane shook her head, less angry now than frustrated. "Waiting on the labs. I know, I'm not supposed to call and harass them but it's kinda fun. But hey, I had an idea. Instead of going to the café, let's stop at that place you like on the way in and you can pick up those pastry things, the ones with chocolate in them."

Maura felt her stomach make an excited little lurch at the idea of Patisserie Valerie on a weekday. There was something about Jane's expression, hopeful and eager to please, that made her realize all over again how fortunate she had been to be standing in line behind her that day at the café. If she hadn't decided at the last moment that she needed coffee, if Detective Crowe hadn't let her ahead of him in line, if she hadn't spoken up to offer Jane money…

Maura felt her eyes suddenly stinging. "I'm sorry. I-I forgot…just a moment." She walked as quickly as she could back to the bedroom, barely shutting the door behind her before she began to cry.

* * *

"Jane, this is a handicapped spot."

"Yes, it is. I'm handicapped without breakfast, so run in there and get whatever it is, those things you get, and come back. I won't even turn the engine off." Before Maura could protest earnestly that this was an abuse of official power, Jane fished the bubble light out, cracked the window and stuck it on top of the car.

As soon as Maura entered the shop, calling out a cheerful _bonjour_ to the girl behind the counter who seemed to recognize her on sight, Jane started frantically dialing.

"Hello? Hey, I'm sorry about that voicemail." When Maura said "quick shower" that usually meant at least 40 minutes and she had thought she could make a few calls without her friend overhearing. "Something happened right when I called and I haven't had my second coffee yet."

"I can't say it was entirely out of character for you." FBI Special Agent Gabriel Dean sounded almost amused. "I think I found what you're looking for, and it's spelled _Mpiranya_."

"No wonder I didn't find anything on Google. OK, where is it?"

"Not that I don't enjoy playing 20 questions with you, Rizzoli, but it would help if I had some context."

_Well, my best friend's woken up two nights in a row screaming that word—how's that?_ "The context is that this is really important and I've got three minutes to talk."

He didn't say anything but she knew the expression on his face, like he was biting his tongue and counting to ten.

"It's a person, not a place. Protais Mpiranya is a fugitive wanted in connection with the Rwandan genocide. He helped train the _interahamwe_, a paramilitary group that was involved in the worst of the war crimes there in the 90s. Death squad would be a better term. Most of the major figures have been convicted by tribunals but he hasn't been captured yet. The _interahamwe_ are supposed to be in hiding somewhere in Congo, but there are reports of them popping up in Zimbabwe and other places."

"Any chance that Burundi is one of those places?"

There was a brief silence and then the tapping of keys. "Maybe. I've got a report here that last week a village in Burundi on the northern border was attacked and burned. Everyone who didn't get out was massacred. Some of our analysts think that it matches _interahamwe_ tactics, and where they are, so goes Mpiranya."

"I haven't seen anything about it on the news. Are you sure?"

"I don't want to sound condescending, but horrible things happen every day in Africa and no one notices." His voice was calm but infuriating in its self-assurance.

"Not in the mood, Dean," she snapped. "Sorry—I'm sorry, it's just you wouldn't believe the last two nights I've had."

She could have learned a thing or two from him in terms of patience but there never seemed to be the time. There was one thing that she knew though, despite everything else that had happened between them, and that was that he was a good agent and he could get her, if not the answers she needed, then at least the next questions she needed to ask.

"Simply put," Dean said at last, "the people in these countries don't have anything that the rest of the world wants and that makes it a lot harder to care. That's not how it should be; that's just how it is. Now tell me, what does this have to do with Dr. Isles?"

Jane whipped her head up, as if Maura might emerge from the pastry shop at the very mention of her name, but she was still standing in line, three back from the register. Maura was watching her though through the plate glass window and raised the bag, pointing at it with one finger and smiling. She must have gotten the last of her favorite. Jane waved back.

"Rizzoli, are you there?"

"Yeah, but, uh, w-why would you think that?" Jane scrunched her face in frustration as soon as she said it—could she be any more obvious?

"Well, since we're being honest," he said wryly, "I saw her name come through on a travel advisory for a group of doctors going to the area for a relief mission. It's a great idea, impartial doctors going in to help where it's needed most, but Burundi isn't the safest place to be right now. In fact, it's pretty much at the top of the list of places _not_ to go."

"Who did you piss off to be put in charge of watching the no fly list?"

Dean chuckled and there was something very gentle in it that she couldn't hate him for. "I keep an eye out for people I care about."

"Wow…I didn't know you two were close," she tried to joke. _Please God, somehow let me wake up and find out this was all a very bad joke._ "Is there something you wanna tell me?"

"She matters to you," he said simply. "And you matter to me. Do the math."

Maura did matter to her, more than she had realized until now. The idea that anyone would have hurt her friend, this brilliant, goofy, amazing, tenderhearted woman, made Jane Rizzoli want to do all sorts of irrational and illegal things.

"Is she all right?" Dean asked.

Jane thought about all the different ways that could be answered and settled on the truth.

"I don't even think she knows the answer to that. She seems OK on the outside but she's being really quiet about the trip. I know something bad happened and she's not ready to talk about it yet. I just don't know what it is." Jane hesitated at telling him about the night terrors and decided against it. There was something too intimate and vulnerable about that, something that Maura had only allowed her to see.

"Jane, do you want me to look into this? It's not FBI business really to go over the border, but I can make some more calls. I have a friend at the Agency who used to work that area."

"Would you…please?" It wasn't a word that came easily to her, especially with their history, but somehow when Maura was involved it was the easiest thing in the world.

* * *

"Frost! Korsak!"

Jane came into Homicide at a trot, holding the lab reports she had collected from Susie Chang in one hand. She had escorted Maura down to the morgue under the pretext of helping her carry breakfast and then splitting up the items 50-50, but also to make certain the lab tech didn't forget to keep quiet.

She shouldn't have worried. Susie had the reports ready but made sure she waited until Maura ducked into her office to hand over a discreet copy of the additional tests. But then, Jane had considered, the little Mata Hari had kept her relationship with Alex on the down low as well, and who would have thought they were nudists either? Still waters ran deep.

"We've got something." She handed the lab report to Frost and stepped back well away from Rocky's pet carrier, which had somehow become a fixture on her desk. "Geez, Korsak, can't you find another spot for him, you gotta keep him cooped up like that?"

"He feels more secure when he knows what his boundaries are, don't you, boy?"

The cat raised his massive head and gave the detective a sullen, resigned look.

"So they found blood?" Frost looked up, grinning. "Good job, Rocky!"

"We still need something to match it to," Jane said, "but yeah. So let's talk to the roommate again, get samples from her and anyone else he's been around for elimination, and when they get the DNA profile maybe we can get a hit."

"Hey, there you are." Frankie Rizzoli was coming towards his sister with a look in his eye that said either their father was back in town or Tommy had gotten someone else pregnant—possibly both. "Ma's looking for you. Have you been avoiding her?"

"Yes, of course. Haven't you?"

"How? It's not like I can't come to work. It's getting worse." Frankie gave her a look, as if that should make everything perfectly clear.

"What, her unreasonable love of the color begonia?"

"Grandkids!" he hissed. "I thought having TJ would sorta settle her down, but she seems to be getting more ramped up. She's asking me about who I'm dating and if we're gonna have kids, like it's any of her business."

"Have you guys decided?" Jane looked between Frankie and Frost. "I mean, you could both donate."

The slow burn on Frankie's face was worth the punch he leveled at her shoulder. "Oh, ow," she said in mock pain, although it had stung more than she would let on. "I guess the testosterone shots are helping, huh?" This time she was ready to duck and made it to Korsak's side of the desk.

"I think you should show a little more respect to your mother." Korsak was swiveling in his chair, trying to stay facing whichever Rizzoli was the most likely to throw the next punch. "It's a perfectly natural biological urge."

"What is?"

Frankie and Jane halted, still grappling, at the sound of Maura's question. All eyes were on the medical examiner now as she stood by their cluster of desks, as always looking far more suited for an afternoon shopping on Park Avenue.

"You left your pain au chocolat downstairs." Maura had wrapped it in a clean paper towel and was holding it out with both hands, as if she'd made it herself. "They're best when they're fresh in the morning."

"Ah, thanks." Jane was actually surprised she had forgotten—even when she was giving Maura a hard time, the woman had good taste in pastries at least. Her rush to get the lab report upstairs had pushed everything else out of her mind. "Good idea, huh?" She bit in for exaggerated effect.

"For a treat," Maura agreed. "But that much sugar first thing in the morning could cause your blood levels to spike before lunch."

"Then I'll get two, save one for the crash and they'll cancel each other out."

Maura blinked and got that focused yet distant look she did when she was trying to figure out how to explain exactly how wrong something Jane had said was. Finally she shook her head and seemed to decide to fight another day. "What was it you said, Sgt. Korsak—a natural biological imperative?"

"Oh, Ma just wants more grandkids." Jane tried to brush the powdered sugar off her shirt and look more professional, which was hard to do when standing next to someone who looked like she had just been dropped off from a fashion shoot. "So yeah, I've kinda been avoiding the café a little. She keeps bringing it up and if she gets really desperate, Ma can try to take things in her own hands."

"You don't think she's crushing up her estrogen pills and putting them in the pancakes to increase your hormonal urges, do you?"

Jane had a sudden image of her mother doing just that, alone in the back of the café at night with a mortar and pestle as she made up a special batch of pancake batter. "Dear God, _what_ do you watch on television when I'm not there?"

"That's actually exactly what I came to talk to you about! I forgot to tell you that I saw that the Celtics will be playing the Lakers tonight. Did you want to come over again or is that something you can watch for yourself?"

Jane glanced at Korsak who looked as confused as she did. "Are you sure about that?"

"I put an alert in my phone." Maura held it up proudly. There was a picture of Bass on the lock screen.

"Was it on one of those ESPN stations we were talking about? Like maybe ESPN _Classic_?"

Maura thought, brightened and nodded. "I think so, yes. I can check." She paused and looked up again. "Oh, you already knew, didn't you?"

"No, I, ah…basketball doesn't start up until December, so that's just a re-run."

"They re-run sports? But why?" Maura looked utterly baffled and it was all Jane could do not to pull her friend into a hug in the middle of the station, just to hide the fact that she was about to burst out laughing.

"Bird and Magic," Korsak said fondly. "1984, absolutely vintage."

"Yeah," Frankie sighed. "We were glued to the whole series."

"Celtics in seven," Frost chimed in. "Magic was magic, but Bird brought the word."

Jane fist-bumped her partner and momentarily forgot herself as she extended the gesture to Maura as well. Cautiously, Maura made a fist and tapped it on top of Jane's as if they were playing one-potato-two-potato.

"OK, that's it," Jane declared. "I'm coming over tonight, we're watching the game, and no it does _not_ matter that I already know what happens. Obviously you don't and that's just wrong. Text me what time and what to bring."

"Oh, like pot luck!" Maura nodded happily and for just a moment Jane convinced herself that she had completely made up everything in her mind: the nightmares, the screaming, the shaking hands, and now everything Agent Dean had told her. This was just Maura being herself with no frame of reference for the regular world.

_No,_ that little voice told her. _No, it's not. Maura never laid clumsy traps like this before, inviting you over to watch sports on purpose. You always had to blackmail her into it. She's terrified of being alone and this is the only way she can think of to keep you there._

Once Maura was safely out of earshot, Frost leaned back in his chair with an appreciative sigh. "She brings you breakfast and begs you to come watch sports with her. Now why can't I find a woman like that?"

"And one who looks like…" Frankie started to add but quickly coughed at the narrowed look in his sister's eye.

"On my friend's behalf," she said with a mock gracious bow, "thank you. Now stop staring at her ass before I kick yours."

"Not to rain on anyone's parade, but didn't we have a case here?" Korsak was trying to lean across his desk to scoop up the copy of the lab report, but came a little too close to Rocky's pet carrier. The cat had been lying in wait for his opportunity and leapt at the grate, trying to get at his captor. Instead of rushing forward to help, Frankie and Jane both took a step back while Frost rolled his chair away with a quick kick against the desk for leverage, leaving Korsak to try to rescue his sleeve from the cat on his own.

"I hope we get a match," Jane said, "because I want to lock that asshole in an interrogation room, throw Rocky in there with him and let him finish what he started. Frost, did you get anything more from the interviews?"

"Nothing we can use yet, but something might pay off once we have a suspect. The building doesn't have any cameras, naturally, but I've been talking to Heather—Ms. Marks, the roommate—and she got us a list of all the people on the hall that they interact with and we're running those down."

"Oh, it's Heather now, huh?" Jane grinned at him. "How many times has she called you back because she remembered just one more thing?"

Frost pretended to check an imaginary phone. "That would be three times, thank you."

"Careful," Frankie said. "If this was TV, that means she's hiding something and she's probably the real killer."

"Except we don't actually have a dead body anymore because the victim refuses to die," Jane pointed out.

"Or maybe, she just likes me."

"Isn't she a little young for you?"

Frost gave her that insufferably smug grin. "All shapes and sizes, Rizzoli."

Korsak had fought his way around the desk and had the lab report now. A two inch swatch of his sleeve was dangling freely and Rocky was frantically trying to swat at the loose threads. "It's amazing what they can find out. Your DNA, your sex, sometimes even where you came from."

Jane tried to focus, to allow the fresh details and possibilities of a lead draw her in, but she was tethered back to the one thing she couldn't forget—something was wrong with Maura, and until she knew what that was and had found a way to fix it, nothing was going to be right.

"Yeah," she agreed. "It's amazing what you can find out from a little drop of blood."

_Even things you never wanted to know._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

"That's like the eighteenth text you've gotten in ten minutes." Frankie Rizzoli tried to peer over his sister's shoulder at her phone but she quickly hunched out of the way. "What're you up to?"

"More work than you," she retorted. "Don't you ever go out on patrol anymore? You just hang around my desk like a, some kind of stupid fish thing that hangs around."

"A remora."

"Yeah, a remora. And it runs in the family," she added in an undertone, spotting her mother coming towards them.

"Frankie, there you are! I've been looking all over for you."

Frankie stiffened before putting on his best surprised face and turning to face her. "Hey, Ma—everything all right?"

Before he could even finish the sentence, Angela Rizzoli had thrown her arms around him and soundly kissed him. "All right? It couldn't be better. Oh, could any mother have a better child, I ask you?" She pressed her cheek to his, beaming at Frost and Korsak.

Jane schooled her face to a perfect mask of disappointed surprise. "What am I, chopped liver?"

"I love you too, baby," Angela said with a quick sideways hug, the kind that distant cousins rated at a family get-together. "Frankie…you're so thoughtful. Do you want to pick me up? It might be easier to go in one car. I'll be ready early, I promise. Come at 6:30. No, 6! I don't want to be late."

With what sounded an actual squeal of delight, Angela scurried off, leaving her baffled son holding the white envelope she had pressed into his hand. His fingers stiff and clumsy, Frankie peeled back the flap and extracted two tickets with a note attached.

"Dear Ma," he read aloud. "I know how badly you wanted to do this and I heard you tell Jane if only someone would go with you. She's so busy with her important work as a top homicide detective…" At that his voice grew suspicious and deepened. "…but someday I'll make you proud, like I'm proud of you. Would you be my date tonight?"

Frankie turned the tickets over and instantly a deep red flush crept up over his collar. "_Legally Blonde: the Musical_? What the hell is this?"

"Oh Frankie…you're the most thoughtful son in the whole world." Jane managed to make it through the first half of the sentence in a sarcastic, crooning tone before she lost control. "Thank God….thank God Ma has you since I'm such a horrible excuse for a daughter!"

"Hey, maybe for Mother's Day, you two can get mani-pedis?" Frost suggested.

Korsak's brows had gathered in a disapproving knot. "I can't believe you even know the term for that. How many have you had? Tell the truth."

"I didn't buy these tickets!" Frankie insisted hotly. "I didn't write that note—what the hell, you set me up!"

Jane affected a look of innocent indignation while edging back out of his reach. "No, I'm too busy being a top homicide detective."

Frankie's eyes were bulging in a way that Maura might have suggested would require a checkup to rule out excessive inter-cranial pressure. "What have I _ever_ done to you to deserve this?"

Nothing actually, Jane had to admit, but it was a miracle that her mother hadn't come barging in to the house the last two nights and she needed to guarantee that again if she was going to have another chance to talk to Maura. It was Maura actually who had overheard her mother wistfully mention how much she missed going out, not that their father had been one for dinner and a show, and Maura who had helped arrange the last minute tickets. Making Frankie take the fall for it had just been an added bonus, and she needed a little bright spot in her day given everything she was trying to deal with.

Frankie had escalated to an apoplectic fit that rendered him wordless and choking and it was only matched by Frost's coughing fit to mask his own laughter.

"It's not so bad," Korsak said. He had an air of resigned practicality, earned and learned from three marriages. "You go, you smile, you clap, and you ask her if she enjoyed herself. Just focus on that and I guarantee your next birthday will be a good one."

Jane's text alert went off again and she checked almost without thinking, expecting yet another message from Maura about plans for the night. In the last three hours, dinner had escalated from pizza, since apparently Maura had an unwritten rule about not eating the same thing two nights in a row, to something extremely complicated and unpronounceable that Jane was in charge of picking up.

"Never should have taught her how to text," she sighed.

But it wasn't Maura.

* * *

"How the hell did you get here?"

As soon as the words echoed back to Jane from the nearly deserted parking garage, she realized how angry they sounded. The only sign Special Agent Dean gave was a resigned tilt of his head. He was wearing a full suit, probably issued by the Bureau she thought, with a very boring tie, and he looked like he had been born in it.

Slowly he pointed at the black sedan he was leaning against. "They run on gasoline, y'know."

"Yeah, but you were in your office when we talked this morning. That's," she searched back to a time in college when she had driven straight through to DC for a Tom Petty concert, "like seven hours away if you do the speed limit, and I know the Bureau checks for tickets."

"Oh, is that why you didn't get in?"

Jane couldn't help smiling at that and some of the first wave of adrenaline washed off her. "I'm sorry," she blurted. "I'm just really on edge and I don't have anyone I can ask for help about this except you, so when you show up like this it makes me think the worst, and right now I've had about all the bad news I can handle."

She waited for him to say she was being ridiculous and it wasn't that bad, it had all been a misunderstanding. He didn't.

Sitting in the car with the air conditioning on, Dean slid a folder out of his briefcase but didn't hand it over immediately. Jane slid her twitching fingers in between her knees and gripped them there.

"I made some calls," Dean said. "One of the major fugitives wanted for Rwandan war crimes was arrested last year, Bernard Munyagishari, and a tribunal is meeting now to decide his case. My friend at the Agency says that rebels are stirring things up right now to create fear and influence the outcome.'

"Let me guess, this Mpiryaninny, whatever, is the one coordinating."

"That's what we think, yes. That's the first piece. Second, I talked to the central African coordinator for the medical team Maura was with. I said that we were concerned with the travel advisory since they'd had a group going into that part of Burundi and asked if everything had gone all right. She said it was good they left when they did because the rebels did destroy a village where they had conducted a clinic the day before. Given the climate in Burundi, they probably wouldn't be sending a team back for a while."

"Yeah, but did she say anything about Maura specifically?" Jane realized that her stomach was clenched tight at the thought that in a few hours she might be woken up for a third night by anguished screaming and there would be nothing she could do to prevent it.

"I've had a little experience with interrogation, Detective Rizzoli, and if you let the subject _volunteer_ information, you can often find out more than if you just charge in, guns blazing."

"Eeeeehhh, yeah, but guns blazing is kinda fun."

Dean smiled for the first time. "Officially, Uncle Sam frowns on it. But yes, she did know something. She said that one of the doctors—Maura—had stayed behind at the village for an extra day and was still there on the morning of the raid. They were worried since they couldn't go back to the area to verify her safety because the UN had it sealed off, but that they got an email from her two days later saying that she had gotten a ride out over the border into Tanzania and she was safe and would just fly home from there."

Jane exhaled but somehow her stomach wasn't feeling any better for the information. "I guess she could've gotten to an Internet café to let them know." _But you couldn't email me?_

"Her flight details on South African Airways were changed and she flew out of Dar Es Salaam, direct to the US."

"So what happened in those missing days?" Jane murmured. "She said she lost her phone and all her pictures, and the most she'll tell you about the trip is that she gave more polio shots in two weeks than we did in all of Boston last year. No irrelevant scientific facts or cultural trivia, and not single damn word about narrowly escaping death."

Dean leaned forward and took his smartphone out of the dash cradle but didn't turn it on. "I'm going to ask you a serious question, Jane. Do you really want to know what happened?"

"No, I just enjoy calling the Bureau and saying _please help me_ because my self-esteem is getting too well developed. Yes. Yes, I want to know the answer because right now, Dean, I don't know what's going on except that my best friend is in a world of pain and for some reason she feels that she can't trust me and I'm doing the best I can, but I'm scared it's not enough." Jane broke off abruptly when she realized her voice was heading upwards to a register that meant tears would be the next stop.

Dean looked at her for a long moment in his unreadable way before he turned the phone on and pulled up a video taken with an unsteady camera.

"The UN sent some peacekeepers in to go through what was left of the village," he said. "They interviewed some of the survivors."

Jane took the phone from him and watched in silence as the camera panned over the burned timbers and crushed hut walls. Bodies lay half-sprawled in doorways, some missing limbs. A machete still protruded from a fallen tree trunk stained with blood.

The footage jumped to a young woman holding a toddler on her hip. She spoke rapidly, pointing back towards the charred remains of a canvas tent, some scraps still flapping from exposed aluminum tent poles. Jane listened carefully but quickly realized that no matter how carefully she listened, it wasn't going to magically translate itself into English.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what she's saying—is there a subtitle button?"

Just then she heard a single word that pierced through the rest, then repeated two more times: America.

"America? So there was an American? Right, Maura, but what does that mean?" Jane knew she was getting even more agitated and probably shouldn't be handling expensive electronic equipment.

Dean took the phone away from her almost before she realized what he was doing. "Not America—Amaurica. It's the nickname they gave the doctor from America who stayed with them when everyone else went to the next site. That woman is telling the peacekeeper that when the rebels came, Dr. Amaurica stayed behind and helped load the children on the only truck they had. She could have run with everyone else and left her patients, but she chose to stay."

Of course she did. Jane closed her eyes, covering her mouth with one hand. "But they didn't kill her," she managed finally. Her throat had nearly closed on her, aching and tight, but she had forced the words out.

"The last anyone saw, they took her away at gunpoint. Jane, I did a lot of reading today and the fact that she survived is a miracle. The things these death squads did during the genocide made the Nazis look like amateurs. They destroyed hospitals, killed patients and doctors, they even murdered an entire Red Cross team. Nearly 800,000 people died, and if they did keep a woman alive, it was to…."

"Shut up." The words were even more frightening for how softly they were uttered. "Thank you, Dean, but don't say another fucking word."

"You're welcome," he said quietly. He put the file folder on the seat between them, barely touching her leg.

Jane's mind was utterly blank which was a stark contrast to the last three days in which her vivid imagination had been running riot. Now that she had the clearest idea yet of what had happened, it was too much for her mind to absorb, and she thought she might want it to stay that way. The problem was that Maura seemed to be repressing it as well, which was working fine by day, but at night…

Jane realized that Dean hadn't said anything but simply let her sit in shock. She had thought he might suggest dinner or at least a drink to numb the pain, and since he had driven so far to tell her in person, she thought she owed him that much. But he didn't.

"I think…if I were Maura, that I would be very lucky to have a friend like you," was all he said. "Call me if you need anything, Jane. I mean it, anything."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

"This is fascinating."

Jane cut her eyes over to where Maura sat cross-legged on the couch, wineglass in one hand. She was leaning forward, lips slightly parted, utterly engrossed in Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals. But, sadly, for all the wrong reasons.

"If you say that," Jane sighed, "one more time…"

Maura never took her eyes from the screen. "Traditionally, the mores and attitudes of the day can be shown to have some correlation to the hemlines of women's fashion, but it seems that male professional athletes have their own barometer in the length and fit of their uniforms."

"Really? You're watching one of the most pivotal games in the history of the greatest professional basketball rivalry of all time, and you're concerned with their outfits?"

Maura glanced at her, then back to the screen, then back again. "Aren't you?"

"Not rebounds, free throw percentages, technical fouls?"

"Setting aside the fact that the cut is completely unflattering and restrictive, there's the matter of putting that bright yellow together with purple." Maura shook her head slowly in unconscious disapproval.

"Thank God you're OK with Celtic green."

Maura gave a neutral little shrug. "I think they could've done something a little more festive if they'd really tried, but it could be worse. And exactly what is a Laker?"

"Hoo boy." Jane debated trying to explain the origins of the franchise in Minnesota, where there were indeed thousands of lakes. It would at least put off the inevitable a little longer, but she hadn't shelled out nearly $200 for show tickets to get her mother and Frankie out of the way for the night just to waste the opportunity. And there was Special Agent Dean, who was even now on his way back to DC. He had sacrificed his day and was probably eating supper from a sack just to bring her the news in person. The least she could do was hold up her end.

Jane looked down at the remains of her own dinner which was admittedly the best meal she'd had in years, possibly ever, although if she told Maura that then she might never see a pizza again. She had arrived to find the coffee table covered in a linen runner and laid out with a full place setting, just short of candles which they all agreed was a fire hazard where Jane was concerned. She had nearly protested the extravagance, but there was something so hopeful in Maura's expression that all she could do was say how nice everything looked. It was a distraction, she understood that now, just another way that Maura was keeping mentally busy and trying to make Jane stay over. As much as she was enjoying the free food and cable, it couldn't keep up much longer.

"What did you call it again?"

"Chateaubriand with a wine-shallot reduction. I think they outdid themselves," Maura said with an approving nod. "Tres magnifique."

The last steak Jane had eaten had been at a cheap cafeteria and it probably hadn't even come from a cow. She had given Maura a hard time about the special order and having to drive around looking for parking along the Charles River just to get to L'Espalier to pick it up, but the tenderloin cut had been perfectly cooked and dressed in a creamy sauce that she couldn't pronounce either.

"It should be incredible. I had to flash my badge at the maitre'd just to get in the door to pick it up."

"If you would just wear that Donna Karan blouse I gave you for Christmas, the off-white one, you wouldn't have so many problems getting into restaurants. And smile. I think smiling would help."

Jane bared her teeth in a frozen grimace that made Maura laugh and set down her wineglass to keep it from spilling. For just a moment she wondered if they could just stay like this for tonight, maybe forever. She didn't have to ask and Maura didn't have to tell—they could just have dinner, watch television, laugh at their lives, and be two of the luckiest people in the world to have the friends and family that they did.

But how long would it last? Would Maura be able to sleep for two hours, maybe three, before she woke up screaming again? Jane couldn't imagine—or didn't want to—everything her friend had been through to make her way safely home, and the least she could do was give her the support she was too afraid to ask for.

Jane tipped the last of her wine upright and poured another glass. _If ever there was a night for liquid courage. _"Speaking of uniforms and jerseys, can…can we talk for a minute?"

Maura had speared the last stray new potato on her plate, swirling it in the béarnaise sauce and popped it in her mouth. "Certainly. What's on your mind?"

_It's more what I'm trying not to think about—you, scared, alone, hurt…_ "You remember that jersey I gave you a few months ago, the one for the Homicide softball team?"

Jane thought she detected the smallest flicker in Maura's eyes, a quick double-blink, while she chewed slowly, as if buying time. "Yes, of course. It was really sweet of you to do that for me, but I have to tell you that something's happened to it. I hope you don't hate me?"

_God, how could I?_ "Oh?"

"It was stupid," Maura said and waved a dismissive hand. "If you tell me where you got it, I can order another one. It got a bad stain and I don't think it's salvageable."

"I gotta agree with you on that. It's a long story, but I found it and it looks like it's been through hell."

Now she was sure of it—Maura's eyes had flickered for an instant, darting to the kitchen, the nearest point of escape before she pulled her legs up on the couch. It was a natural enough posture for them when they talked, lounging at opposite ends, but there was something defensive in the way she circled her legs with one arm.

"I felt so bad about it after you got it for me specially, so I didn't want to say anything. Usually I'm not the one of us ruining her clothes." She gave a half-smile over the rim of her glass as she took a sip that turned into two steady swallows.

"True that," Jane said, raising her own glass. She waited another moment, allowing Maura to absorb what they were talking about. She wasn't going to cannonball into the deep end, but they were wading in the shallows and heading steadily deeper. "I know it's probably impossible for you to override your reply mechanism, but let's play a game and see if you can let me say something for five minutes without stopping to correct me for grammar or anything."

Maura considered. "What about facts?"

"Those too. I—I, geez, this is hard. I'm worried about you, Maura," she blurted. "I've been doing some thinking, and I want to lay out what I've come up with."

Maura set her wineglass back on the coffee table and the surface shimmered as her hand had begun trembling. Her expression was calm though, as if they might be talking about her needing to cut back a little on mail order shopping. Jane reached out and found Maura's hand, determined that for these five minutes at least her friend wouldn't be able to escape the fact that she wasn't alone.

"I know something happened while you were in Africa. You can call it a reddish brown stain all you want, but that's blood all over that jersey and I know it's yours. I could ask you to tell me what happened, but I love you too much to make you get hives and start hyperventilating when you try to lie, so I'm just going to tell you what I know. I know that you volunteered to stay behind to finish vaccinations at a village while the rest of the team went back to your main camp. After that you got separated from them and you found your own way back to the States. I know when you said you lost your luggage, you didn't mean that the airline lost it. It never made it on the plane because you didn't have it with you."

Maura's face was gradually growing paler and even her hand had turned ice cold but she didn't pull away. Jane wondered if she was simply too shocked to move and she didn't waste any time pressing on.

"I know that there's been a lot of trouble in the region and the civil war's supposed to be over and all, but really bad things still happen. Some rebels came through and destroyed the village you were at. You were there and you helped evacuate as many of the kids as you could. If it hadn't been for you…"

Maura had recovered enough to start shaking her head in disbelief and denial. "Where are you getting this from, Jane? Because I didn't bring back any pictures? Trust me, you don't want to make a slideshow out of what I saw."

"I've still got three minutes and then you can tell me how wrong I am, OK? Listen to me. Protease Mappirununya."

Maura's face went blank. "What?"

_Shit._ "Protis M'piranye? Hell, I don't know how to pronounce it, but I do know that when you've woken up crying and scared to death for the last two nights, that's the name you're screaming, and you sound terrified. Please, please—look at me—I know this is hard, but you can't ask me not to care or to try to figure out what's going on."

"Yes, and thank you for caring, but there's not a case here for you, detective."

Jane felt herself grin a little inside, happy that Maura was actually pushing back. Anything was better than that dead, scared look. "See, that's why they give me the badge and you the scalpel. I looked him up and I know he's one of the most wanted war criminals in the world right now, and this is what I think: those were his rebels and he was with them. You and your Wikipedia brain recognized him. Why else are you saying his name? I don't know why they didn't kill you on the spot, maybe they needed a doctor for some reason, but they got you all wrong. They didn't know how strong you are and you found a way to escape."

That was the easy part.

"I also know what those men are like," Jane said unsteadily. "I know what they do to people, to women, and I know you're lucky to be alive. Nothing, absolutely nothing, changes that you are the best, brightest, bravest person I know, and I am so proud that you're my friend."

Jane stopped, studying Maura for some reaction but she had retreated a step behind a cool, impassive expression. "It's not bravery." Her voice was quiet and logical. "If you don't have any other choices, then it's simply what you have to do."

"No…no, Maur, you did have a choice. You could have run with everyone else, but you would never do that. You didn't have a gun, so you put your body between those children and anything that would hurt them. Not one person in a thousand would've done that."

Maura let her chin rest on her knees as her eyes closed. When they opened, she fixed Jane with a look that she had seen once before in the eyes of her first dog, a retriever mutt, on the day they had realized that he wasn't getting better and that they needed to go to the vet for one last trip. There was pain, fear, and also the trust that somehow Jane would find a way to put her out of this misery.

"I took an oath," Maura said quietly, as if that were the only explanation; in some ways, it was.

Jane squeezed her hand lightly but there was still no response. She had taken an oath too, to protect and serve. She had failed miserably at the first part, sending Maura off into the wide world only to walk straight into the most dangerous and terrifying situation imaginable, but she could still serve, and nothing would keep her from it.

"Hey, I know my five minutes are up and I'm not good at girl talk, but I have to ask if you're OK, aside from the nightmares I mean. Have you been to a doctor yet? If you don't want to go to yours, we can find another one. Can they get you on some drugs or something in case there's an infection or…AIDS or something?"

Maura was sitting upright now, staring at her with an intense yet somehow utterly confused expression. "AIDS?"

"Yeah, y'know, Acquired, uh…" Jane realized she had no idea what the acronym stood for. "Whatever. It's too late for a rape kit, but…"

"Jane…I wasn't raped."

Jane had no idea how much time passed as she sat in stunned silence, simply blinking, lips parted like a goldfish. As if their roles had completely reversed, Maura was sitting forward now, one hand on her shoulder.

"I wasn't raped. Is that what you think happened?"

"Well…yeah. What did you think I was talking about?"

"Honestly, half the time I have no idea. Why did you think that?"

Jane shrugged and felt her heart roll loosely. "I got on the Internet and started researching this guy. It's like his trademark. And the jersey—that's not just blood, there's semen too."

Maura's eyes lit with comprehension and she sat back, nodding in what seemed to be approval and growing excitement. "That's true. Oh, this is a real step forward for you. You had a hypothesis and you tested it instead of just assuming. I completely see how you would have drawn that conclusion from the evidence."

"You wanna help me undraw it?" Jane burst out. Her heart was pounding now with released tension and her skin was flushing alternately hot and cold. Everything she had been thinking and fearing for the last 72 hours was completely turned on its head and the room was beginning to gently spin. "I've already been thinking the worst thing possible, so whatever you tell me is going to be good."

Maura picked up her wineglass with a hand that was perfectly steady now. "Let's start over at the beginning."

* * *

A/N - sorry for the cliffhanger, but it'll be worth it :-) The final four chapters should be up tomorrow.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: We do have some mature (euphemistic) discussion in the first half of the chapter and some unpleasantness to get out on the table. I might give it more of a PG-13-ish rating? If you have any concerns, please feel free to PM me.

Chapter Nine

Maura had never realized how much time Detective Jane Rizzoli spent with her eyebrows furrowed in confusion or raised in surprise. In the last ten minutes, they had been doing a kind of frenetic dance between the two extremes while Maura mechanically recited everything that had happened after the morning she had made the decision to stay behind at the village while the rest of the medical team returned to their main camp.

"OK." Jane held up one hand and leveled a respectful look. "OK, I just…need to make sure I've got this. The rebels who attacked the village, that was the Rwandan death squad that's led by Mp…that guy. He was sick…"

"Shot," Maura interrupted. "Unrelated incident, a different raid the day before."

"Unrelated except that's why they were looking for a doctor, so they kidnapped you to treat him. They took you God knows where up into the hills, blindfolded, and when they finally let you see him, you realized he might not make it."

Even before Maura had understood why she had been taken to the rebel base, she sensed there were some larger forces at play. The gunmen had the air of men who answered to someone else and they were all too aware of what could happen if they couldn't answer satisfactorily. When the slightly built man in glasses and a makeshift camouflage fatigues had entered the meeting tent, she had instantly realized from the way the others responded that this was that man. He hadn't carried an ivory-handled .45 or worn ornate epaulets and medals like so many posturing dictators and warlords before him, but Maura recognized a calm, sinister violence in his smooth, unlined face

"So this second in command told you that if you can't save Mpiranya, he was going to gut you like a pig?"

"Wart hog, actually," Maura said. "They're common to the sub-Saharan region."

"OK…whatever, wart hog. And then just in case you didn't believe him, he _stabbed_ you?" Jane's voice was cracking now, whether from shock or outrage Maura couldn't tell.

"No, stabbing would be a penetrating puncture," she demonstrated with one hand, "whereas a slice moves along the surface of the dermis in a more or less direct line."

"Did he hurt you with something sharp and pointy?" Jane ground out each word.

"Yes."

Jane gave a quick convulsive swallow. "How bad?"

Maura suspected from the way her friend's hands had twitched that it was all Jane could do not to punch something, even if it was only a throw pillow.

"There's nothing you can do about it." As soon as she uttered the words, Maura realized her mistake. It was against everything in Jane's nature to simply sit by while someone else hurt, much less a loved one, and for Maura to remind her that she was useless was nothing short of cruel.

Gingerly, Maura stood and raised the hem of her sweater, then peeled back the dressing to reveal the six-inch length of neat black stitches that ran down the left length of her abdomen from just below her ribs to the top of her hipbone. The skin was still red with irritation but beginning to close at last

"Wow." Jane opened and closed her mouth before repeating, "Wow. That's pretty badass."

A small hard laugh caught Maura in the throat. She hadn't thought of it that way until now and there was something unexpectedly funny about it. "Will that get me into the BPD Scar Club?"

"Lifetime membership. And you're sure he didn't hit any organs or anything?"

"No, the blade tip barely reached the subcutaneous layer. Flesh wound," she clarified. "They were just trying to scare me."

Jane laughed unsteadily, still staring wide-eyed at the stitches. "I don't know about you, but it's working. My God." Impulsively, she leapt up and pulled Maura into a hug that was just tight enough to reveal just how scared she was. Maura closed her eyes, remembering again how frightened she had been herself, when a sudden jolt of pain lanced through her and she bit back a very undignified yelp.

"Whoa, what's wrong, what's wrong?" Jane stepped back quickly, hands raised.

Maura took a deep breath, exhaling the first bright wave of pain and letting it roll through her and away. "It's all right, I'm just a little bruised up. I got hit with a rifle butt once or twice." More, actually, much more, but Jane was starting to look murderous and there was nothing that could be done about it at this point.

Jane's eyes narrowed as she took Maura by the shoulders and firmly turned her around. There was no point in resisting, so she pulled her sweater up again to expose the massive bruising that spread across her back and ribs. The resulting stream of profanity told Maura that it looked worse than it had the night before.

"That bad?"

"You know how you said you hated Lakers colors? Well…sorry." Jane coaxed her to let the sweater drop, then to sit back down.

Maura curled back into her end of the couch and pointed back over her shoulder at the television. "Oh, I forgot. Did you want to see how the game ended?"

"Nice try. Celtics 111, Lakers 102, Larry Bird MVP." Jane found the remote with one hand and turned off the set. The silence that fell seemed unnaturally loud. Jane was fidgeting with the remote, seeming to gather herself for something that did not want to be said. "So if you weren't raped, which I'm _really_ happy about by the way, the, um, bodily fluids?"

Even now Maura's mind flinched slightly. She had alternated between repressing and replaying the moment, searching for some rational way to explain what had happened. That rationality had anchored her until now, but having to say it out loud might expose some crack in the logic. But this was Jane—the one person who would understand, and whom unaccountably she hadn't wanted to tell.

"In a wolf pack, you have an alpha and he leads until he's too weak; then the next strongest wolf takes his place. You were right, I did recognize Mpiranya and I know what he's been accused of—over a half million people died, and the rapes and torture as well. He's been terrorizing that region for nearly two decades and his men live in fear of him too. When he looked weak, the second in command had to make a show of force to keep them in line. He cut me as a sign to the men of what would happen to people who didn't respect Mpiranya's authority, and he also established himself as the strongest contender. Then he made it clear that they weren't to touch me yet either by…" Unexpectedly, her throat constricted. Maura swallowed and tried again, surprised that a simple biological process was suddenly impossible to articulate. "He…"

"He marked his territory," Jane said quietly. "On you."

Maura nodded, surprised that her eyes had started to sting. _There's nothing to be ashamed of_, she told herself, as she had a hundred times, but the emotional pain was raw and unexpected. There was no logical reason for it and that had scared her as much as anything that had happened. "It was a threat I suppose, to let me know what was going to happen, to frighten me into trying my hardest. I'm sure that if they hadn't needed me to operate on Mpiranya that they would've done much more than that from the start."

"Maura, I'm so sorry…I know it could've been worse, a lot worse, but Jesus, I…" Jane gave up trying to speak and moved across the distance between them to slide one arm around Maura's shoulders. "I'd give anything to be able to trade places with you."

Maura closed her eyes against the sudden welling of tears, fighting not to let them spill over against her will and be absorbed against Jane's shoulder. _Don't break down, whatever you do, don't break down. That will only upset Jane even more._ "You probably would've kicked his ass," Maura said when she trusted her voice again.

"No, I would've shot m'mouth off and gotten killed in the first two minutes. You're a lot smarter than that. You knew they needed you and you used that to stay alive. What happened when you operated?"

Maura had considered giving her usual speech about not being a surgeon and only working with the dead, but had decided against it under the circumstances. "I found three bullets and I did what I could, but he had lost a lot of blood. It wasn't easy of course," she said quietly. "I won't lie. It crossed my mind to refuse to treat him after everything he had done, but I would've had to break my oath."

"You know I would forgive you for that, right?"

"I wouldn't be able to forgive myself."

She remembered the dismay she had felt seeing the makeshift medical area, supplemented by what little of her own equipment they had thrown into the truck before setting fire to what was left of the village. There had been scalpels at least, and she had taken a very unprofessional pleasure in the pain that the raw rubbing alcohol had caused when she washed out the wounds. Her own side was burning, the trickling blood soaking through her jersey which had already seen better days. She had knotted the hem tightly around her waist as best she could to act as a bandage and keep her hands free. It had been hard enough to concentrate, and then she had heard the guards talking.

Maura sat up, pushing her hair back out of her face as she surreptitiously wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand. Jane hadn't moved and was watching her with dark, worried eyes. "Do you remember Ian?"

Jane nodded with a patient expression that seemed to say, _How could you expect me to forget your international smuggling snuggle buddy_?

"The guards spoke French to me, it's the common trade language, but I learned enough Rwanda-Rundi from Ian to be able to understand what they were saying to each other, and that's how I knew that it wouldn't matter if Mpiranya lived; they were planning to kill me anyway. Do you know what image came to me in that instant? It was of being here, in this house, with you and your mother and your brothers and our friends. All I could think about was walking in the door to have dinner like we'd planned, and I knew if I could see you again, then everything would be all right. It was like you were there with me in my head the whole time, telling me to stay alert and be smart. Jane, I wouldn't have made it without you."

"Forgive me, Dr. Isles, if I say that from a completely selfish perspective, thank God you can't get me out of your head."

"The feeling's mutual." She raised her glass in a mocking impromptu toast only to realize it was empty. Instantly, Jane scooped up the empty bottle and was back from the kitchen in moments, holding out a Cabernet Sauvignon in both hands for Maura to approve the selection.

"You know," Maura said carefully, "I don't think there are any guidelines for choosing a vintage for this kind of occasion."

Jane agreed that alcohol, of any variety, would be appropriate and insisted on wrestling with the corkscrew. Maura thought the cork broke somehow in the process and a sliver fell down into the bottle but decided it was the least of her problems tonight. She waited until Jane had filled both their glasses again before she said, "When I finished the procedure, I knew I didn't have long. Even if I didn't manage to escape and they shot me, at least it would be better than staying for the inevitable." She didn't have to say what would have meant.

Even knowing the outcome, Jane's voice was rough with apprehension. "What did you do?"

They had taken her shoes and her phone when they had put her in the open truck bed and blindfolded her. The phone she understood, but it took a few minutes, her brain frozen with fear, to understand that without shoes she couldn't escape, or at least that was what they would have thought of any other foreigner. They had no way of knowing how many articles she had read on barefoot running and the natural advantages of the strike pattern, or how many weeks and months she had spent training to build her foot muscles to run the next Massachusetts Marathon. Confident that she was cowed and helpless, the guards had stepped away to share a cigarette, and she had heard Jane's voice in her mind telling her to run. _Run now_.

"Barefoot," Jane exclaimed. The wine was utterly forgotten. "You out ran them? Barefoot?"

"Fortunately, none of them were Kenyan. What? Why are you laughing at me?"

Jane was covering her mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking. "It's either that or throw up!"

"The two functions are similar in many regards."

"You just can't help yourself, can you?" Jane sighed. "Does this explain why you've been going to work in flats, because you tore your feet up? Thank God, I thought there was something seriously wrong with you."

Her feet were in fact still in pain, and seeming to get worse as time passed instead of improving. She had been able to cut a winding path down from the hills, avoiding roads, until she reached a major highway and flagged down a farmer on his way over the border to Tanzania. He had stopped, possibly just for the novelty of a limping, barefoot white woman standing alone in the middle of the road.

"So congratulations." Maura smiled and found it was less difficult than before. "You were nearly correct—you should be a detective."

"Nearly?" Jane snorted. "I got 95% of it, thank you, and I have never been so happy to be so wrong about the other 5%. So then you got to an airport? What about your passport?"

"You should always keep a photocopy of the main information page on you at all times when you travel internationally." Sometimes Maura was amazed that Jane could function at all in society. "Fortunately, my airline also had service out of Dar Es Salaam so I changed my flight, traded my watch for some shoes and a new shirt, and came home the same day as planned. And here we are." With that she took another sip and realized she had nearly finished the glass already, so she carefully set it aside. Tomorrow morning would be hard enough as it was.

Jane blinked hard. "Well, you're alive, so, yeah. But this is you and this is me, OK, Maur? I'm not angry, I promise, but why didn't you tell anyone what happened? You didn't do anything wrong, you know that, right?"

And why hadn't she? When she contacted the team coordinator in Burundi to let them know her change in plans, why hadn't she told them everything? Why hadn't she gone to the nearest embassy or found a UN team? Why hadn't she thrown away the jersey instead of just wearing another shirt over it? Some part of her had utterly frozen, panicked at the thought of having to disrobe, to think about what happened much less talk about it. She had known one thing only, that she had to get back to this house and to the people she loved, and that if she could do that, then she could survive.

"I'm not sure." Maura shook her head at that, feeling an indefinable distress begin to rise up inside her again as she tried to make sense of her choices. "All I could think about was getting home and back to work. It was like I was on auto-pilot. I knew that if I could get back, then everything would be fine again and that was all I could think about." She felt something tightening inside, her mind starting to raise barriers to protect her from something that she couldn't even see yet but that was approaching, hard and fast. "And then when I landed, it was like life just started up again and it didn't seem worth…" _Opening up? The chance that she would finally feel something and that would be so much worse than what she was already going through? _"Worse things happen to people every day and they don't survive. I could have gotten this scar just as easily at work if I slipped with the cranial saw."

Jane was staring at her in a way that Maura knew meant she had just said something worthy of a cyborg. "Maura, I know you know this, but you've been through something extremely traumatic. Your mind isn't like a bone that you can put in a cast and let sit and it fixes itself. Yes, you were very lucky, but you don't have to actually get blown up by a bomb to get PTSD."

Maura felt unexpectedly stung, or perhaps emotions were simply unfamiliar after the sheer dead numbness of the last week. "I think I know the signs and symptoms of PTSD."

"And you also know that a doctor should always get a second opinion and not operate on herself. Just think about it—we tell each other everything, so when you need help most and you decide not to tell me, then that says something's really wrong. I would've gotten on a plane if you'd called. Of course," Jane said grudgingly, "that would mean getting a passport and I probably would've had to kill someone at Homeland to get it pushed through."

_But would you have come?_ The thought came so silent and sly that Maura blinked, surprised at herself. She looked down at her hands, then at Jane's as they rested on her knees; the tight and twisted scar that Hoyt had left was shining in the overhead light. That encounter had changed Jane Rizzoli, leaving a scar inside even more pronounced than the ones on her hands. She abhorred weakness and victimization; she shied away from those who had been closest to her and kept them at a firm, if not always polite, arm's distance. Maura knew without asking that if she failed Jane and became that victim she despised, then Maura would lose everything she had come to cherish most—her work, her friends, the Rizzolis, and ultimately Jane herself.

But the truth was out now and there was nothing to be done but settle accounts and see what was left to collect. Maura steeled herself.

"You couldn't partner with Sgt. Korsak anymore after what happened with Hoyt and it's never been the same between the two of you. If I had told you what happened, then it would mean something changed between us too, and…" _Do not cry,_ she thought fiercely, _you have nothing to cry about_. "I know we haven't talked as much about what my life was like before I moved to Boston, but it's not something that I ever want to go back to. I didn't have friends, I didn't have anywhere to go for holidays—I saw my family every few years, if that. My idea of a pet is a tortoise, for God's sake. If I told you and you looked at me the way you looked at Korsak…" Maura floundered to an inelegant halt.

Jane was still listening intently, actually allowing her to finish, which was a sure sign that she agreed—nothing would keep her from interrupting when she didn't.

"Yes," Jane said simply. "Things are going to be different from now on. For starters, you're going to stop telling yourself insane bullshit like that. You're not weak, Maura, and you're not a victim. You're the strongest person I know, and if managing to escape one of the most dangerous wanted fugitives in the entire effing world doesn't prove that then…then maybe you got hit on the head at some point and you just don't remember. Second, in case I forgot to mention it this week, I'm an idiot. Not working with Korsak again was my problem. I was the one who was embarrassed—it had nothing to do with him. Maura, I am never, _ever_ going to push you away."

Maura knew that she should be feeling better for what her friend had said, but her mind was to numb to absorb the depth of what was being offered. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I hear everything you're saying, but I just can't stop thinking about what will happen now."

An energy began to rise in Jane's eyes, the kind of slightly manic way she got when there was a new case and a problem to solve. "OK, you have to process, you're a woman."

"So are you!"

Jane shook her head in an amused, long-suffering way that ordinarily would have made Maura roll her eyes in protest. "Not like that, I'm not. What are the five stages—disbelief, hatred, shock, blackmail, surrender?"

Maura closed her eyes. "Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is turning over in her grave right now."

"Do I know her?"

Maura shook her head in resignation. "Not everyone goes through the same stages in the same way. I just…don't know what I feel. It's not exactly something I ever thought would happen and that's how I cope with the world. I think about it and I make sense of it, but nothing makes sense."

"I know that's your mind works, but sometimes things just don't make sense." Jane had an apologetic but resolute note in her voice. "I just don't want you to wind up getting more hurt because some of this stuff got stuck inside. You know we can talk about anything. What can I do?" The quiet, growing desperation in Jane's voice nearly made Maura wince.

"There is one thing that's helping," she said. "Would you stay again tonight? I know it's inconvenient but the only time I can sleep is when I know someone else is here and you're the only one I trust. I can't seem to sleep in the bed just yet, which is completely illogical, but if I could just sleep through the whole night, it would…"

"I'm staying." Jane was smiling at her in the gentle, humoring way she had. "You think I wasn't planning on that already after the last two nights? I'm not going anywhere, Maur, whether you believe it or not. Now you know I love your weird French food and that sauce was amazing, but they used five tons of onions, so go brush your teeth."

"Those were shallots—they're a close relative of the garlic family."

"Is that supposed to make it better? Go, woman!"

As if her mind had suddenly been given permission to collapse, Maura stumbled through her bedtime routine, brushing with mechanical motions and changing into the first pair of pajamas her fumbling hand found in the drawer. By the time she shuffled back to the living room, pillow in hand, she barely noticed that Jane had tuned in C-SPAN with the volume set low for white noise. And if that wouldn't put her to sleep, Maura considered, nothing would.

Jane was trying to smile but couldn't help looking worried. "C'mere, lie down before you fall over." She had already set her cell alarm and kicked off her shoes, the unfortunate black half-boots that Maura had tried to talk her out of multiple times, then stretched out along the couch. "Only thing is we have to get up early in case Ma comes in for breakfast."

"Do you think she would interpret this as an indication that we're in a relationship?"

Jane's chuckle bordered on a groan. "Well, she sure as hell won't think it's because you got kidnapped by Rwandan war lords and have a bad case of Pavorti noctarelles. I've got enough problems without her starting in."

Maura cocked her head to one side as she thought about what she knew of Jane's mother. "I think Angela would be very accepting. And she did call me the daughter she never had," she added matter of factly. Jane's face flushed and she let out a strangled protest. "It would effectively double her probability of grandchildren, if we both did in vitro at the same time. Who would you pick for a donor?"

"Maura."

"I would choose Paul Sereno. Brilliant paleontologist, University of Chicago, very rugged. It's rare to get that kind of bone structure and intellect in the same chromosomes."

"My God, now I know why you never took naps as a kid—they could never make you shut up. Lie down before you face plant on the coffee table."

Conceding at last, Maura settled on the couch and slid under the blanket, mindful not to place any strain on the stitches. There was more than enough room for them both and she reached behind her, finding Jane's hand to lock their fingers together and bring one arm securely down across her body. The effort of having to hold so much within, keeping up a façade of normalcy, had sapped her to the bone. Now as she was folded into a place of unquestioning warmth, shelter and protection, her mind finally understood it no longer needed to shield itself and she could simply slip away, the exhaustion rising like a tide.

"I'm going to take care of everything. You know that, right?" Jane's words came to her quietly and without any hesitation or doubt. They were a promise and a vow that she was safe now and always would be.

Before she could say _yes_, Maura was asleep, and this time there were no dreams.

* * *

A/N: Not to break the mood, but if you haven't Googled Paul Sereno (particularly from the early 90s), and are so inclined, you really should.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Jane Rizzoli knocked lightly on the office door and waited, for once, to be invited in before pushing through. She wasn't in a mood to be polite, but something about standing outside the headmaster's office flashed her back to high school days when Sister Winifred Callahan had made this Jane's second home

Father Xavier Logan looked up and barely stifled a flinch as he recognized her. "Detective Rizzoli—Jane, hello." His sandy hair had begun to grey in the years since she had graduated nearly 20 years ago and they had only seen each other in an occasional official capacity, but he still had the same squared jaw and bright blue eyes. Unfortunately, Jane knew that being a cop meant that people expected the worst when you popped in unexpectedly, and from his expression this was no exception.

"Father, thanks for seeing me. I know I don't have an appointment, but I asked your secretary if it was OK."

"Of course. Please, sit." The priest's face told a very different story, something along the lines of _Holy Mary, mother of God, protect us now in our hour of need—the Rizzolis are back._ "Is, ah, this about your brother?"

"No, but you'll be happy to know that Tommy's working steady and he has a new baby. He's not here," she added, and Father Xavier's face relaxed into a smile. Ever since Tommy had run over the assistant priest at St. Margaret's several years before, the diocese had been on an unofficial Rizzoli watch.

"How's your mother? I saw her last week after Mass lighting a candle."

Jane wondered just how many of the burned out votives belonged to Angela Rizzoli and her requests for her children, not to mention unborn grandchildren. "Ma's good, keeping busy, keeping us in line." Father Xavier had come to the end of his innocuous social questions and was waiting on her. "I have a question about confession"

"Certainly. We have a schedule of available times, but if you have a pressing need, we could make other arrangements."

Jane remembered waiting her turn to enter the dark confessional box, fumbling through a list of things she had come up with for the week, and a few that her mother insisted she needed to include (punching Frankie, disrespecting her mother, taking the Lord's name in vain). This was different.

"It's more of a question about how it works. If I think I'm going to probably commit a sin, but I haven't done it yet, how does that work?"

The priest's bushy eyebrows raised at that and he seemed to be fighting a smile. "I think the general recommendation would be not to do it at all."

"Yeah, I thought you'd say that. Actually, I'm not sure it's a sin or not. Maybe that's what I'm asking."

"Maybe you could tell me a little more about what you're thinking of doing?"

Jane crossed her legs and then re-crossed them. The chairs were just as uncomfortable as she remembered. "Is this like the confessional? I mean, if I tell you something, can they make you repeat it?"

"No, not if we have that understanding. Is this a professional issue?" the priest asked carefully.

Jane wasn't sure how to answer. She was almost as surprised as he was that she was even here actually. Since talking to Maura last night and then waking up this morning with a fully formed plan of action in her mind, she had been operating on auto-pilot. Under any other circumstances, she would have gone to Maura first to ask advice, but that was the last thing she could do. Even Korsak and Frost were out of the question and she was starting to realize that she had a very, very limited pool of friends she could trust. She had always thought of herself as someone who knew her own mind, but something had changed in the last few years as she had grown closer to Maura and come to rely on her for advice and a more balanced perspective. She knew what she needed to do, but some part of her wanted to know that she wasn't completely insane.

"No, it's about a friend. She's the best friend I've ever had and she's a really good person. She could be living in Europe and not working a day in her life, but she wants to help people and she's sacrificed a lot for that. Someone really bad tried to hurt her and she could've died. It's a miracle, an absolute fu…phenomenal miracle," Jane caught herself. "She escaped and she's kind of messed up, but I think she'll be OK if she'll let me help her."

Father Xavier was nodding with growing concern. "I'm glad to hear that. Do you need recommendations for counseling services? We have some available through the parish as well as a network of secular providers if she's not comfortable with a priest."

Jane couldn't decide if it would be a good idea or if she would need to call and warn the priest first. "I don't know how she feels about priests," Jane said honestly. "My friend is kind of special, as in 'not really from this planet, one of us' kind of special. What I'm trying to figure out is what I should do about the people who hurt her. I think I know a way to take care of it. Permanently."

A wary look came into Father Xavier's eye and he sat back. "While I do subscribe to the idea of a higher law and justice, I would never advise anyone to take those matters into their own hands when we have established authorities. As a police officer yourself, I'm sure you understand that."

Jane wasn't even sure how to explain, but when she had woken up that morning to Maura making breakfast—poached eggs, whole-wheat scones, fresh fruit and double espressos—she had understood with startling clarity that she had to do something more than simply be grateful that her friend was safely home. The rebels would continue to kill and terrorize and destroy lives, and each of those women might be someone else's Maura. She was half a world away, but it didn't mean she couldn't try.

"It didn't actually happen here in America. Where these men are, there are no authorities, just guns and violence. If they had police you could trust, sure, I'd do that. I wouldn't even be thinking about this except…except I know that other people, kids, are going to get hurt if I don't do what I can. I know I can't save everyone, but I think I'd be doing something just as wrong by not even trying. Isn't that the case, that if you know you could do something to prevent a crime and you don't, then that's a sin in itself?"

Father Xavier was thinking now and she sensed that he wanted to give her more than just a cursory, stock answer. There was something troubled in his eyes, as if he had been faced with a similar situation once and hadn't made the correct decision then.

"What do you think would happen to these men if they were here, in America?"

Jane brightened. "Well, if it was Texas they'd be dead already. Massachusetts," she shrugged, "we'd have to settle for never seeing the light of day again." She knew she was supposed to be a little more Catholic about it probably and not be so disappointed that Massachusetts didn't have the death penalty, but she couldn't deny her gut. "The problem is that they have so much power and everyone's too scared to stand up to them, and for a good reason. I think I know what to do, but it might mean going outside the lines and getting other people involved. Ordinarily, I'll be honest, I wouldn't even be here—I'd just do it and be damned. Sorry," she hastened at the pained look on the priest's face. "I didn't mean it like that, but this is bigger than anything I've had to think about before. My friend, she's the one I always go to for advice, but I can't now and I guess I just wanted to hear myself say it out loud."

Father Xavier took a heavy silver pen out of his desk drawer and a notepad with the diocese's letterhead engraved at the top. Jane thought for a moment that he was writing her a prescription—take two Hail Marys and call him next Sunday—but saw that it was a Bible verse which he folded into quarters and handed to her.

"I think you'll do the right thing," he said quietly. "It's good to see you, Jane. I'm glad we have you with us."

Out in the car with the engine idling, Jane unfolded the note and read the reference there. She had to smile at the thought that the priest had chosen not to write out the verse but instead to give her one last homework assignment. Thumbing her phone on, she put in the reference and read the words it returned:

"But whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in me—it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea."

The phone suddenly rang in her hand and she jumped, juggling and nearly dropping it before she answered.

"Hey Frost, what've you got? Yeah, I can be there in 20."

* * *

The apartment building's interior hallway was dark and without any windows which made dodging the trash bags piled by doorways that much more complicated. Jane realized she hadn't even been to the crime scene yet since Frost had covered for her three nights before when Maura had returned, letting her off the crime scene detail in order to be at dinner. She let him walk ahead with Heather Marks as they climbed the stairs past the malfunctioning elevator and up to the third floor apartment. Korsak followed a half-flight behind with Rocky in his pet carrier. The cat seemed to realize he was back in his own building again and had quieted once they entered the stairwell.

"Thanks for coming back with me," Heather said as they reached the apartment door.

Frost pulled down the crime scene tape and tried to clear the last few trailing bits off the door jamb before opening the door. "No problem."

Jane followed, taking in the cramped but tidy interior. She realized with a pang of guilt that she had been neglecting the case in light of everything else she had been thinking about, letting her partner and sergeant handle more than their fair share of the details. She had tried to tell herself that her idea of getting DNA from the cat's claws had more than balanced things out, but it still didn't feel quite right.

"It just feels a little creepy coming back." Heather stood in the middle of the living room, cautiously looking around as if she expected her roommate's attacker to still be there.

"Are you sure you want to stay here?" Jane asked. "Just because we released the scene doesn't mean you have to if you're not ready."

"Thanks, but the hospital says Tina can come home next week and I wanted to get the place cleaned up. I want to move somewhere else, but there's nothing in our price range right now and it's a lot to get organized. Besides, it's harder to find a place with Rocky."

Korsak had just reached the doorway, face flushed with exertion, and set the cat's carrier down on the floor. "He's no trouble," the sergeant lied. "Great cat."

"If you don't value your furniture," Heather said dryly.

Jane glanced at the couch and saw that it wasn't really plaid, but the cushions had been torn into very fine strips that looked like an interlocking weave at first glance.

"Could you show me the bathroom?" she asked. "I'd like to look at the window where the intruder came in."

Heather glanced at Frost who gave her an encouraging nod. Jane's eyes widened and she shot Frost a look to ask just how much time he had been spending with Heather, protecting and serving. From the smug smile he gave her, the answer would seem to be quite a lot.

A short hallway off the living room led to two bedrooms with a bathroom in between. Jane flicked on the flight to examine the window above the tub. The wooden sash had been repainted recently and stuck when she tried to open it.

"Did you leave the window up at night a lot?" Jane tried to temper her tone, something she was learning after the last three days with Maura, but there were questions that needed to be asked and some of them might sound like accusations.

Heather wavered. "If it was hot, yes, but never while we were asleep. It's not the ground floor, so it felt a little safer, but I guess that doesn't mean anything anymore."

Jane stepped into the tub to put her head and shoulders out the window. A few feet above, a metal fire escape ran past. It wouldn't take much for a motivated intruder to swing down and through the window.

"Thank you. Is Detective Frost keeping you informed about the tests we're waiting on?"

Heather nodded as they walked back to the living room. "Yes, he's been very helpful. Everyone has. I know you're doing everything you can and I just hope they can find something and get a match if Tina doesn't start remembering what happened."

In a perfect world it wouldn't have happened at all, Jane thought, but she had stopped thinking it was a perfect world a long time ago. "We hope so too. Are you sure you're going to be OK alone here for the night?"

Heather indicated Rocky's cat carrier and gave a rueful smile. "I'm not alone. I picked some tuna up for him—I think he deserves it."

She escorted the detectives to the door and Frost began the painful process of detaching the apartment keys from his ring without slicing open his fingers. "You just call if you think of anything," he said slowly, working the keys free. Korsak muttered something to offer the over/under on the odds of that happening and Jane kicked his ankle.

Heather looked up to ask them what they had said when her eyes focused halfway down the hallway and she fell silent. A deliveryman in a Pizza Shack uniform knocked on the apartment door closest to the stairwell and stood back, waiting.

"Hey." Heather gave the deliveryman a half-hearted wave which he returned. "How's it going, Brad?"

"Pretty good," he called back. "Lotta calls today." The door opened and he stepped inside with the pizzas balanced on his fingertips

"I don't know if I'll be able to eat pizza ever again." Heather seemed to deflate slightly and Jane wracked her brain to remember the connection. Right, she had gone out to pick up pizza while her roommate stayed home. That was why the victim had been alone and naturally her friend felt responsible. _What don't I know about that?_

"It's not your fault." Jane realized she sounded a little angrier than she should under the circumstances, but she meant it as much for herself. "You can't not go about normal life, and I'd shoot myself if I had to give up pizza, but if…dear God, what is _wrong_ with that cat?"

The pet carrier had begun to vibrate and inch along the floor towards the door as Rocky howled and threw himself against the sides. Korsak went back inside to search the kitchen for a towel to throw over the carrier to try and calm the animal.

"I'm starting to understand why Maura has a turtle." Jane had to raise her voice so Frost could hear her over the racket. "Is he always like this?" Jane yelled.

Heather looked up from where she was kneeling by the carrier. "No. I mean, he's difficult, but this is weird. Rocky, cut it out already." When the cat persisted, increasing his decibel level, she gave up. "Let's just get him inside. Can you get me a broom or something long? I don't want to touch the carrier."

Jane heard an apartment door open and looked up, expecting to need to flash her badge and give an official reassurance but saw it was only Brad, the pizza deliveryman, who was counting his money and stowing the pizza box in its carrier. Rocky re-doubled his howling which caused Brad to slip and drop his money pouch. Nervously, the man glanced down the hallway, fumbling with the change as he tried to scoop it back into the bag.

Jane felt her mind, which until that moment had been distracted with worry, uncertainty and everything that a detective should never let interfere while on the clock, sharpen to a razor point. Every detail of the scene became crystal clear as she took in the deliveryman's shaking hands, his nervous glances back at the cat, and the trousers and long sleeves he was wearing even at the peak of summer. She had no choice in the department dress code, but most Pizza Shack workers wore a short-sleeved polo…unless they were hiding something.

Without stopping to think, Jane triggered the latch on the pet carrier's door. Brad's eyes widened and he abandoned the money, scrambling to his feet and heading for the stairs. Rocky, ears back and eyes black with rage, shot out of the cage, down the hallway and leapt for the deliveryman before he could reach the stairs. The cat's claws dug in like a rock climber's pitons and he clambered up the man's back, leaving bloody gouges. Brad screamed and tried to pull his shirt off and over his back to bring Rocky along with it, but the cat sank his teeth into the man's shoulder and hung on until Frost and Korsak reached them.

"Get it off, get it off!" Brad yelled.

Korsak held Frost back with one hand against the younger man's chest.

"Why doesn't Rocky like you?" he asked mildly.

"Just get him off! Jesus, off!"

"I'm going to have to call this in," Korsak said to Frost. "I don't think I remember the procedure for this. Is there anything you can tell us that would explain why he hates you? It might help me remember how to do this. Wow, look at all those old scratches—have you done this before?"

Rocky had reached the side of Brad's face and latched on to the man's ear with every intention of re-creating the Mike Tyson/Evander Holyfield heavyweight bout of 1997.

"I did it!" Brad screamed as he flailed at the stubborn cat. "I did it, it was me, now get him off!"

"I'm sorry," Frost said, cupping one hand to his ear. "You did what? And you do realize that everything you say can be used…" He rattled off the Miranda rights in what was the fastest time ever achieved by a Boston Police Department representative.

"I hurt Tina, it was me, and I'm sorry! God, get him _offfff!"_

At that final rising shriek, doors were beginning to open along the hall. Korsak was satisfied and threw his suit jacket over Rocky, scooping the cat up without waiting for him to release his grip on the deliveryman's back. Brad gave one last helpless scream as the claws tore free and lay whimpering on the hallway floor while Frost quickly cuffed him.

"Holy shit," Heather said with solemn respect.

Jane nodded with equal reverence. "I'm guessing you ordered from Pizza Shack that night?"

"Yeah, they had a pickup special, why?"

"We'll need to check the work logs, but if an order was called in for pickup, then anyone who had delivered here regularly and knew your routine would know that only one person would be home and exactly when. Maybe he used the bathroom once, knew about the window?"

Heather's face went ash-white. "That son of a bitch," she whispered. "Tina thought he was nice. She always tipped him."

"Yeah, well, he thought she was nice too. Hey, look." Jane got Heather's attention away from Korsak's efforts to get Rocky back inside the apartment. "We've got this guy dead to rights with a confession in front of multiple witnesses and that DNA's going to return a hit, I guarantee it. With that much proof, you might get lucky and he won't even want to go to trial. But just because we got him doesn't mean it's over for your roommate right away. Can you be there for her or find someone who can?"

"Absolutely," Heather said quietly. "She's my best friend."

* * *

"Is this what you really want?"

Jane had thought about the question in the drive back from the apartment crime scene to the station, knowing somehow that Agent Dean would ask, and it had been no real question at all. "Yes. It's what I want."

She could almost hear him debating over the phone line, taking on the patient, let's-think-this-through expression that made her want to punch him. She had chosen to call him from the women's bathroom at the precinct, thinking that the locked door might somehow make the room feel more like the confessional it was mimicking, and there was less chance of her being interrupted and losing her nerve.

"There's no guarantee," he said at last. "This would be like a chain of dominoes and if at any point, one of the links doesn't pan out, then nothing comes of it."

This she had also thought through and he couldn't convince her otherwise. "I can't just let it go and not at least try. Even if it doesn't come together, I'll know that I tried everything I could and then I can live with myself. All I'm asking is if you'll make the call."

"How's Maura with this?"

Jane debated what to say, feeling there was something sacred about what her friend had told her the night before, even though what had happened wasn't as violent as what she and Dean had originally feared. She wondered if this was what it was like to be a priest, walking around with the wounds of the parish hidden in your body. _No wonder Father Flannery likes to drink._

"We had a really long talk last night," she said at last. "She told me everything and it could've been a lot worse. I think things are getting better, but I'm afraid it's going to haunt her to just leave it half-finished. Did you ever have a case where you couldn't catch the guy? And your surviving victim said it was OK and you'd done everything you could, but there was just something a little dead in their eyes for the rest of their lives?" That was the very opposite of what she had just seen at the crime scene just now and how she felt, knowing that they had caught the suspect and that there was no doubt of his guilt. That was the kind of certainty and resolution she wanted to give Maura, no matter what it took.

"We've all seen that. There's nothing you can do except try your hardest, you know that."

"Exactly, and this is me trying my hardest. So if you won't do it for me, then would you do it for Maura? I can't stand to see her like this and if there's a chance, any chance at all, then we at least have to try or we need to turn in our badges."

There was a faint, almost imperceptible sigh from Dean as she held her breath, eyes closed. "All right. I'll call you when I know. But Jane?"

"Yes?" _Anything, anything._

"No promises beyond that. I'll call and then it's out of my hands."

She ended the connection and remained where she sat on the bathroom counter, the phone held between her hands as she swung her legs in a slow, aimless pattern. There was nothing to do now but wait, and waiting was something that Jane Rizzoli was very, very bad at.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

"What are you doing? Jane?" Maura twisted around in her chair, peering back into the kitchen. "Do you need help?"

"No," Jane insisted. "I know how to work a spatula. You can't believe everything my mother tells you." Without turning around, she sensed Maura starting to get to her feet. "And if you stand up and come over here, so help me God, I'm calling your doctor. He told you to stay off your feet for at least another week and he put me in charge of enforcing it." There was a suspicious silence which she interpreted as Maura sitting back down again.

It had been two nights since Jane had finally learned the truth about what happened in that day in Burundi, confirming some but not all of her fears. She had thought she would feel better in the aftermath, and in some ways it was infinitely better now that she could simply ask Maura if she needed help without having to come up with an excuse to cover her suspicions. But having to stand by idly, waiting for the emotional collapse, was stretching her nerves to the breaking point. The real question was which of them was going to get there first.

There was another minute's silence before Maura ventured a veiled protest. "Did you know at the annual distance running camp in Embu, Kenyans train on average of 140 miles a week which is nearly four times the average peak weekly load for a marathoner?"

Jane carefully turned down the heat, flipping the sandwiches one last time for a seared golden finish. "I can't believe I'm going to ask, but this is relevant how?"

"I didn't even run 15 miles, maybe 20 at most."

"Last time I checked, they don't go straight down a mountain with a gaping stab wound and gunmen after them, although I bet you'd see some record times if they did." Jane quickly assembled the tray, then carried it to the table to set it down in front of Maura. "Grilled cheese and tomato soup. Wah-la."

"Thank you," Maura said solemnly. "I know you don't like cooking. By cooking, I mean something that doesn't involve a microwave. And it was a foothill, not a mountain."

Jane gave her a tight grin and a warning tilt of her eyebrows. "Keep it up, Doc, and I'll leave you to the mercy of Purina One. Just ask Jo Friday."

Maura paused, the first sandwich triangle half-way to her mouth. "I didn't even think about her. Did you leave her alone at your apartment?"

"I wouldn't have much of an apartment left if I had." Jane wondered how Rocky and Jo Friday would get along as a crime fighting duo. "I asked Frankie to step up and be an uncle. He's not really talking to me right now after the whole musical theater thing, but he didn't want her to suffer. She's probably living large on burgers and brats right now."

Maura's eyes seemed to say that while that might be one person's idea of heaven, it certainly was not hers. She tentatively bit in to the sandwich, then closed her eyes. "This is…really good," she said in slow surprise. "What did you call this?"

"Grilled cheese."

"No," she laughed, "before that."

Jane thought, twisting the dish towel between her hands. "Comfort food?"

"That's it! So this is what you eat when you feel depressed and unattractive?"

Jane's lips pursed, then re-formed in a half-smile. "When you put it like that, yeah. And then you feel better." And that was her main objective, to do anything she could, no matter how superficial, to make Maura feel better. The problem was that her friend seemed determined to intellectualize her way through it, and that was what worried her most of all. She knew that Maura tended to remove emotion from the equation, but nothing Jane did seemed to convince her that this was the last thing she needed to do.

"Hmmm." Maura considered the sandwich and its hundreds of saturated fat grams "Wouldn't you feel better also from the endorphins released by exercise?"

"Maybe," Jane said grudgingly. "But I don't think you're getting the point of comfort food. You're just supposed to sit there, eat it and feel better. Then when you feel better you can get angry with yourself for gaining half a pound, although in your case, you need to put back on at least…" She squinted, considering Maura as she sat with perfect posture and the remnants of the first sandwich half poised between her fingers. "Two pounds? Three?"

"You're just saying that to make me feel better." Maura took two more bites, careful not to burn herself on the toasted cheese. "I have a hypothesis that you're being nice to me on purpose."

"I'm always nice," Jane protested. She pulled out one of the chairs, turning it around to straddle it with her arms crossed along the top rung. "I'm a really nice person. It's just everyone else who has a problem"

"I'm sure that's what your pizza deliveryman suspect…"

"Guilty as hell, victim assaulting scumbag."

"…is going to say. You apprehended him 'by feline'? That's what the report said."

Jane shrugged and scrubbed her eyes with one knuckle to wipe the sleep away. Maura at least had been sleeping better the last two days, but her own reserves were running on empty. "Our eyewitness gave a positive identification." Of course, said eyewitness, Rocky, couldn't be called on to testify in court, but the DNA was a match, as she had known it would be. "Try your soup. Don't let it get cold."

Maura put down the sandwich and fixed her with a calm, level look that said the next sentence was going to contain words like _overprotective_, _hovering_, and _space_. "I don't mind your hovering, Jane, and I don't even mind your being a little overprotective…"

"Define overprotective." In Jane's opinion, nothing short of a Navy SEAL escort squadron until the day Maura retired was going to be sufficient.

"…but I'm afraid you're not getting enough space." Maura put one hand on Jane's crossed arms, trying to soften her words. "You have no idea how much I appreciate everything you've done, but are you getting a little burned out?"

"Let's go back to overprotective. Is driving you to the doctor overprotective? No, OK, what about a GPS tracker on the Lexus?"

Maura shook her head and went back to her sandwich. "You know, your mother's getting worried."

"She should be happy then. She's not happy unless she's worrying." Jane thought the sandwich must be exceptional, a mix of white cheddar and pepper jack, because Maura didn't stop eating to reprimand her but settled for a disappointed look instead. "Don't worry, I talked to her about it today. I went by the café, had the estrogen bunny 'cakes, and I told her a version of what was going on so she wouldn't get worked up."

"What was in this version?" Maura asked quietly. She kept her eyes fixed down on the soup as she swirled the dollop of cream in and then carefully spooned it up.

"I told her that I'd been having problems with nightmares again and not sleeping, so I'm staying over for a while until things get settled down. She assumed I was talking about Hoyt of course. I mean, it's accurate…sort of."

"What did she say to that?"

Jane grinned. "That she loves and accepts me for who I am..and you could do better."

Maura considered reflectively, head tilted. "Do you really think so?"

"That was a jo…" Her mobile rang. "Rizzoli?"

"Remind me never to piss you off."

Jane stiffened at the sound of Agent Dean's wry voice. She stood up, cradling the phone against her chest. "I've gotta take this for just a minute." She pointed at the food, then at Maura. "When I get back, at least half gone, understand?"

She stepped out to the courtyard adjoining the guest house, first checking to be sure her mother's car wasn't there. "All right," she said, "what've you got?"

"You were right," he said simply. A jolt of adrenaline hit Jane's heart, flooding out through her lungs. "I reached out to Interpol and they went to the French authorities who have been holding Dr. Ian Faulkner since he was arrested on smuggling charges when he returned to Africa last year. You two have quite a history it seems. He wouldn't talk at first, but when they mentioned Maura's name, like you suggested, he was willing to negotiate with them. In exchange for a modified sentence, he provided a few very sensitive, high interest contacts along the Burundi/Rwandan border. When those contacts were asked about the geographic details you provided from," he paused, seeming to pick over his choice of words, "your 'source', they were able to pinpoint two likely areas where Mpiranya's _interahamwe_ forces were headquartered."

"And?" The word came as barely more than a breath.

"I don't know if you have time to watch the news much, but I think it would be very interesting tonight. They usually do a global recap during the 6 o'clock coverage and I don't think this story is going to slip through the cracks."

Jane's voice caught and splintered. "Thank you," she managed at last. "Thank you, I don't know what I can do, but thank you."

"I already told you," Dean said. "Just send me an email every so often reminding me not to piss you off. And look, I don't know what will come of it, but there's a 5 million dollar reward for Mpiranya's capture."

Jane glanced through the window looking into the kitchen at where Maura sat, dutifully eating and not complaining once that it was soup from a can. She had never thought of her friend as fragile, but knowing now how close she had come to losing her made Jane all too aware of how dangerous their lives were. Money couldn't buy that.

"I don't know how much of that will trickle down to you after taxes, but you could buy a really nice suit with that, Dean." She tried to laugh but everything had gone shaky, even her knees, and she had to lean one shoulder against the side of the house. "And if anything's left over, pick a nice charity, OK? I, ah, I gotta go. I need to check on Maura."

Jane tried not to slam the door behind her as she re-entered the house but her hand slipped on the doorknob. She started to apologize and saw that Maura hadn't even noticed but had moved away from the table, despite Jane's threats, to stand behind the couch where she had full view of the television.

It was only supposed to happen like this in movies, Jane thought as she slowly crossed the distance between them. That perfect moment when you turned on the radio and the right song was playing when usually you had to wait all day for it. Now Maura had turned on the television, bored with waiting for her, and there it was: shaky hand-cam footage taken on the ground along the Burundi border as the news anchor, a very earnest young woman working her way up the anchor ranks one link at a time, was reading the summary over the footage.

"…report that a raid conducted on the rebel camp in the hill country bordering the tiny nation of Burundi, revealed the hiding place of Rwandan war crimes fugitive Protais Mpiranya. Mpiranya, thought to have been hiding in Zimbabwe, was a key leader of the paramilitary forces involved in the killing of over half a million Tutsi tribesmen and sympathizers during the Rwandan genocide, as well as the rape and torture of tens of thousands of women and children. The investigation is ongoing and it's not clear at this time if Mpiranya was shot during the raid by UN Forces or it he was already injured at the time of capture as some sources are reporting. All eyes in the international community will be on the tribunal as they prepare a case against Mpiranya and bring to a close one of the bloodiest chapters in recent African history."

Smoke was rising from the camp as blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers oversaw the securing of equipment and prisoners, but Jane only watched from the corner of one eye as she stepped gently around to look at her friend. Maura was gripping the back of the couch with one hand while the other had crept up to cover her mouth, fingers barely brushing her lips. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, those lips began to tremor.

"Hey," Jane said softly. "Look at me."

Maura's eyes remained fixed on the screen, now filled with a head shot taken from the wanted poster which had circulated for over a decade. The poster was now stamped across diagonally with the heavy block letters "FOUND". Her lips moved, struggling to form words, but she couldn't force her voice to make any sound.

Jane took her by both shoulders, trying to get her attention as gently as she could. "Can you look at me?"

Maura's eyes flickered to her, wide and nearly wild with disbelief and amazement, then back to the screen. A stretcher passed by the camera carrying a half-covered corpse. The slightly built man under the sheet wore non-descript camouflage and a pair of broken wireless spectacles. Maura stiffened as the camera focused on him, then swallowed convulsively and it seemed to set off a trembling that was spreading throughout her body. She had both hands on the couch now to support herself and her knees were giving way when Jane caught her.

"It's OK, I've got you," she murmured as Maura's arms tightened around her neck. "It's over now, it's over." There was a sudden stillness then and Jane held her breath, wondering if they had somehow taken a step backwards and that Maura's mental walls were gathering to come rushing upwards.

Then, very quietly, she heard the first soft sob, followed by another and another, gradually welling up from the depths of fear, spilling out as uncontrollable weeping that shook Maura's entire body. Steadily, Jane took the rage and anguish into herself, willing to stand all night if she had to until Maura, who had never done anything normally, made it through all five stages of grief simultaneously.

"It's over," she whispered, again and again. "It's over now." The crying continued though, and she understood it wasn't just for Maura herself, finally releasing all the fear she had contained so bravely, but for every person who had died in the village that day, every child she hadn't saved, but also every one that would grow up now without knowing the name Mpiranya as anything more than a textbook footnote.

Jane managed to hook the leg of one of the dining room chairs with her foot and drag it over to ease Maura down to sit. She knelt in front of her friend, brushing back her hair but Maura kept her face buried in her hands. Unsure what else she could do, she simply cupped her hands around Maura's face, letting their foreheads rest together as she closed her eyes and tried to remember how to pray

Minutes, maybe an hour later, at the slow end of incoherent tears, came the single question: "How?"

"Doesn't matter," Jane managed despite the tightness in her own throat. "I promised you I'd take care of it." She didn't know how Father Xavier would feel about it, but she had made a promise to come back and light a dozen candles if somehow she could find a way to bring this to an end for Maura, and against all odds she had managed just that. "I meant it. I'll never let anyone hurt you again."

In the spreading calm as they sat together, Jane simply held Maura and finally felt a tiny nod against her shoulder. It was the smallest of movements, barely detectible, but the first step in a long journey back.


	12. Chapter 12

Epilogue

Maura Isles was accustomed to early rising, but there was something about the slant of light that told her it was later than she thought. And also, she considered, that she was in her own bed for the first time in nearly a week.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

Maura rolled over, blinking into the light. "What time is it?"

"Breakfast time," Jane said unhelpfully. "Don't worry, I called you in sick."

"I'm not sick," Maura murmured. She pushed herself upright in the bed, propping against pillows and tried to shake the sleep from her head. It felt like several days had been crushed into one and all poured inside her skull. "I don't want you to lie for me, Jane."

"What, you've never called in sick?"

Maura shook her head. "Well, except for that time when I was interning at the CDC and the Ebola sample got left out in the staff fridge, but everyone was quarantined then so I don't think that counts."

"Why can't it be just yes or...oh right, because it's you," Jane said. "Hey, I got you breakfast." She pointed at the plate on the nightstand and the mug of coffee resting next to it.

"Is that an apricot croissant?"

"From Valerie herself," Jane said proudly.

Maura was torn between being amazed and puzzled. "But they don't deliver."

"They do if you threaten them with a health inspection."

Maura gasped, one hand going to her mouth. "You wouldn't!"

"Yeah, well, Pierre on the phone got a little snippy. But then," she said, hands splayed out towards the croissants like a magician pulling the climactic prestige, "I told him who it was for and suddenly he couldn't fill the order fast enough. You make quite an impression on the people you meet. I don't think you realize that."

Maura gave her a small, demure shrug and became intently focused on taking a bite without shattering pastry crumbs everywhere in the bed.

Jane sat on the edge of the bed, one leg pulled up beneath her. "We need to talk about last night." Maura didn't look up, her shoulders beginning to hunch slightly. Last night was starting to come back to her, what little of it there was to remember. She didn't know how long she had cried or how her body could possibly have contained the grief she had released, but she did know that Jane had remained with her the entire time. She had to admit that she felt better after the first few bites and wondered why crying always made her feel like she was waking up with a hangover.

Jane got a firm hold on one end of the croissant and took it out of her hand. "You can have it back when you listen." Maura subsided but with a wounded look, or as much of one as she could summon while her head was dully throbbing. "How do you feel?"

"Like I threw up on myself in public."

Jane looked impressed. "Wow, have you ever done that?"

"No, but I worry about it. It's very undignified."

Jane smiled and patted her leg as it lay bundled under the duvet. "OK, well, I have, and trust me, you weren't even close. You went straight to the pass out stage. Do you even remember me carrying you in here?"

Maura had a hazy recollection of that, or at least of falling towards her bed, as if watching through a faded lens. "Not really," she admitted. "I do feel better though, headache aside. It's like everything that happened since Burundi hit me all at once. Have you been here all night again?" It was difficult to tell with Jane's clothes sometimes.

Jane nodded, glancing over to the overstuffed armchair in the corner. "Yeah, so whenever your brain tries to feed you some line like I don't want us to work together anymore, I want you to think about the hell my back is going through right now after what your chair did to it, OK?" She was grinning now and Maura couldn't help but smile herself, feeling the last piece of the fear that had been clinging to her drop away. The worst had already happened, everything she had feared, and they were still here.

"Jane—how did…what did you do?" she asked quietly.

Her friend fell uncharacteristically silent, fiddling with the seam of her pants leg. "There are a lot of people who care about you very much," she said at last "Each one of them had a piece of the solution. I'm just the one who put the pieces together. Maybe we can leave it at that for now."

Surprisingly, Maura found that she was perfectly all right with that. "May I have my croissant back, please?"

Jane pretended to think about it before handing it over. "I also went over and talked to Ma and explained to her about how I'm having some work done at my apartment on the kitchen, so I'm moving in here for a while. You never know with contractors."

"But you don't use your kitchen," Maura said. "You don't know how to cook." Jane was making absolutely no sense today.

Jane grinned. "No, but you and Ma do, so good for me. I'll stay as long as you need and we'll work up to you staying overnight on your own. Next, we're setting up a schedule."

"I hear the words coming out of your mouth," Maura said with narrowed eyes, "but they don't match the face. Sch-ed-ule?"

Jane pointed at the half-finished pastry. "Eat or I tell Chef Valerie."

Maura covered the croissant protectively with one hand as she took an antagonizingly tiny bite. "Schedule for what?"

Jane pulled her phone out and tapped through several screens, then placed it on the bed between them. As she read the words, Maura found herself chewing more and more slowly.

"I wouldn't fit in. Those groups are for soldiers, for men and women who fought in combat." She picked up the coffee mug to punctuate that this was her final decision.

"Riiggght," Jane drawled. "Whereas you just stood up single-handedly to the most wanted war criminal of the last 20 years, got stabbed, escaped alive, and got him captured after thousands of soldiers from dozens of countries have been running around the continent and couldn't even catch his shadow."

An unexpected surge of something she thought might be pride welled up in Maura's stomach. "Well, I wouldn't say I exactly captured him."

"I would." There was nothing joking in Jane's voice now and Maura found that she couldn't look away. "You're a hero even if no one but me is ever going to know it. You belong in those meetings, Maura. They even have some just for women. I'll go with you, I'll drive you, and if your damn feet don't come back online, then I'm carrying you."

"You can't…"

"Yeah, actually, I can. I mean, not very easily if you keep living on pastries, but I can. I'll sit outside and wait as long as it takes and catch up on paperwork. Frost and Korsak are making me do all the reports for the cat case."

Maura knew the look on her best friend's face and that there was no other possible outcome than to agree. She wasn't convinced, not yet, but Jane was and that would have to be enough.

"Hey." Jane covered her hand with her own, squeezing gently. "What are you worried about? Is it Susie, did she say something? You know, I can have her arrested."

"No," Maura said thoughtfully. "She's actually been more helpful than ever, not that I'm complaining. What did you tell her? I'm assuming she's the one who tested the jersey."

"Oh, that thing I threw in the morgue crematorium? Yeah, I told her you explained everything, that you were doing emergency surgery and you got cut, so your blood got on it and then it got used as a rag after that, so it picked up God knows what."

Jane was leaning over now, searching for something on the floor by the bedside. Maura tried to remember where Bass had been last spotted and if it was likely he could have made it to this side of the house since yesterday. Jane emerged from the bag with a red and white softball jersey, its sleeves still creased and the familiar Boston Homicide logo on the front.

"I don't think it meets dress code for the office, but when season starts back up, you'll be ready. Just try not to bleed on this one, OK?"

Maura was speechless as she reached out to take the jersey, pristine and white as if nothing had happened—a clean slate.

"Crap, you're not going to cry again, are you?" Jane hunched over to stare her in the face as she held the jersey to her chest. "Geez, I didn't think you had anything left in you after last night."

"No," Maura sniffled. "It's perfect, thank you. I'll only wear it on game day, I promise."

"Why did you take it with you on the trip anyway?"

Maura had been asking herself that, but hadn't quite been able to pin the reason down. "I made a list of everything I needed, made sure that I picked one main color to coordinate around, and somehow I kept putting the jersey back in the suitcase. I think it reminded me of home and of having friends and…I never told you this, but I've never been on a team before."

"No, really?" Jane said, eyebrows raised. Maura couldn't tell if she were being made fun of or not, which usually meant the answer was yes. "I mean, you didn't do science team or quiz bowl or anything?"

Maura shook her head. "Boarding school tends to attract loners. It's like tossing a lot of north-polarized magnets in a shoebox together."

"Not that I know what that means, but I would've picked you."

"Thank you. You're a very nice person, Jane."

"No, I like to win and you're the smartest person I know."

_Am I really?_ "Except when I convince myself that you're going to stop being my friend if I tell you the truth. Pretty stupid."

Jane smiled in a way that Maura had never seen before—relieved, grateful and gloating all at once. "It's just because you're a logical person, Dr. Isles. You took the evidence you had and you applied it to the situation at hand. You just forgot about that little principle that there's nothing you can ever do to make me stop being your friend."

"Really?"

Jane sat back, looking worried. "I don't like that face, Maura. Spit it out."

"I was talking to your mother and…"

"Oh God," she whispered.

"…after Frankie took her out to the play and she had such a nice time, she said that she felt so left out and like you two were drifting apart."

Jane gave a frustrated groan and punched the bed. "I'm already like Australia," she complained. "How are we supposed to drift any further?"

Maura cleared her throat and shifted upright against the pillows, gathering her hands in her lap. "Well, I had an idea about that."

"Please God, anything but an idea."

"She always said how much fun it sounded like to go the spa, like that time we went and had mud baths?"

"And a stabbed pregnant woman bled out on us and you had to deliver the baby. Yeah, it's coming back to me now."

"So I said I'd take her."

Jane's eyes, already squinting shut, shot open in hope. "You'd take her? Like you're the daughter she never had, step up and take one for the team?"

Maura waited, letting Jane relax just enough to absorb her good fortune, before adding, "And I said I could get you in half-price too. We're going on Saturday."

"We?" Jane bleated. "Plural, all of us…we?"

Maura nodded, trying her best contrite smile. "Obviously no mud baths with my stitches." She raised the hem of her pajama shirt, counting on the sight of the dressing to help Jane's protective instincts kick in.

Jane gave a dismissive shrug. "I've seen bigger."

"You're just jealous because your entry wound is so small."

"Oh God, you're right…do you have something sharp I can stab myself with?"

Maura felt tiny sparks of something she thought was happiness begin to ricochet within her. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt truly happy, but sitting here in the morning light, laughing with her friend, it was starting to come back to her now.

"So about Saturday…" Jane said.

"It's already paid for."

"Damn," she muttered. "But seriously, there's not a lot of privacy at those things—massages, tiny bathrobes. Are you OK with Ma noticing that you're still a little banged up? She doesn't know how to not ask. Do you want to wait a few weeks?"

Maura fell silent, considering the bedroom, her house, and this life she had been so afraid she would never see again. It had taken everything in her to simply survive and make the journey back, and somewhere along that way, the rigid control had that had helped her survive had somehow taken on a life of its own…but now it was time to let go.

"Well, maybe she will," Maura said. "And I think if she's anything like you, then she would care enough to ask and she'll be a very good listener."

Jane nodded slowly. "Yeah. I think she would be."

"Which one of us do you think is her favorite?"

Jane's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"

"Well, it's only natural for parents to have preferences, even if they love all their children equally. You are her only biological daughter of course, which carries weight, but as she thinks of me as the daughter she never had, the daughter of her heart, that would be significant in an entirely different way. The tribesmen of…"

Silently, Jane lifted the lid of the pastry box and extended it to Maura. "Please," she whispered. "Shut up."

The End

A/N: Thanks very much for reading along and all the kind notes. I greatly appreciate the encouragement and I hope that you've enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Full Disclosure: Yes, I love French pastries, once owned a cat exactly like Rocky, feel that men's basketball uniforms from the early 80s are a fashion disaster, think that the best sleep occurs on the couch, have traveled everywhere _except_ central Africa, once narrowly avoided attending _Legally Blonde: the Musical_, have run a marathon (not barefoot!), and would probably murder anyone who tried to hurt my dear, goofy, brilliant best friend whose birthday it is this week.


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